BERLIN TALK 2014

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 BERLIN  TALK

I  am so honored to be with you at the  TRANSART INSTITUTE.  And I thank Transart  for inviting me to this inspiring experience.

I am inviting 7 collaborators, the 7 CHAKRAETTES to come forward and collaborate with me and in return they will receive a PERFORMANCE ART CERTIFICATE. (INSTRUCTION: Please hum any long tone as I read.)

As you can see by this video, I am enjoying morphing myself, I am enjoying abandoning my ego and identity , I am enjoying shedding my birth skin and trading my personality to be someone else. In 1975 this became one of my performance strategies when I sat in front of a video camera for a year and talked as 7 different fictional and international personas  inspired by Duchamp's  female self, Eleanor Antin's King, Diane Torre's male drag and Cindy Sherman's cast of characters.

 I chose to be Mother Teresa because I always make art about my life and because I have a neurologic condition which spasms me without my permission, one day when I was doubled over, like this(DEMONSTRATE), my good internal voice said, "Linda, you look just like Mother Teresa!" And just like that Mother Theresa the Second, was born.

This video references my early work which has always been based not only on a visual component but on vow taking and structurally sculpting long periods of time. For example, Mother Theresa the Second appeared for three days, three hours a day...These kinds of endurance number games I began using in 1971 and continue 43 years later in my current practice.

My longest endurance was titled 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART, 1984-1998.   The CHAKRAETTES will demonstrate the 7 sites of the 7 Chakras for us. (INSTRUCT THEM).

See website: www.lindamontano.com  and go to 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART.

(CHAKRAETTES will now continue long tones to accompany my chanting.)

We artists have important jobs . We must thank ourselves for bringing so much joy to the universe and we do this because we are:

PROPHETIC   SEERS
TRAMA   TRANSFORMERS
ALCHEMICAL   TRAVELLERS
EARTH   AMBASSADORS
SOPHISTICATED   SUFFERERS
RISK   REFORMULATORS
ENDURANCE   ADDICTORS
PERFORMANCE   STRIPPERS
LEFT BRAIN  AVOIDERS
BEHAVIOR  MODIFIERS
LIFE/ART PLAYERS
GRIEF  EMBRACERS
SELF  HEALERS
FIERCE  FOCUSERS

NERVOUS SYSTEM  REPROGRAMMERS

SONIC   CLEANERS

STORY  RE-TELLERS

PEACE  RECONFIGURERS

DEATH  FACERS
HERMETICAL  LONERS
BEAUTY  DUPLICATORS
TRUTH  SAYERS
DREAM  PROVIDERS
AND
INTENSE  LOVERS

 

BOB DYLAN VIDEO.

 

In memory of Klaus and in support of Cella at this time of her grieving, let's all send a long tone of love to her. Inhale, let any sound come out on the exhale, we will continue the sound until it ends.
 





 

WISDOM: IS IT DOABLE? WHAT DOES DOROTHY DAY SAY?

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WISDOM: IS IT DOABLE? WHAT DOES DOROTHY DAY SAY?
 Presented at  ST FRANCIS HOUSE: A CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY, Connecticuit

Linda Mary Montano

PART 1

As we age, we gather more and more information and it takes us longer to retrieve facts and longer to cross reference neurocortexed  details from physical memories, psychological memories, moral memories, factual memories and spiritual memories. As a result of this multi level firing of information packets stored in our past experiences, we slow down to retrieve and let our wiring do it's job. This is not a bad thing but is often seen as a misdemeanor and sign of wrong, wrong, and more wrong. And the worst case scenario is that fear and trembling set in, the adrenal glands do the fight-flight dance and memory stalls to a halt. Permission to be slow, to walk slow, to think slow, to eat slow, to talk slow is a great cure for that.  Slow life, I salute you.

Back to the wise: The wise are spacious and exude an atmosphere of rich acceptance of reality as it is and  often wise elders are doppleganger-stand ins for  Zen masters when they are that in touch with their natural deep selves. Both exude mountain-like majesty.

So it is good to be  wise, good to be  slow and deep and spacious, certainly not qualities found on day and night TV show  where speed, verbal karate and lightening -like dismissal of the moment and the other is a commodity to be treasured.

So now that being old and wise seems so fabulous, how do we approximate, imitate or practice to be wise. Here are a few suggestions.

We all know that the wise do all or some of the above:
*move mindfully&physically as much and as often as possible
*move mentally according to individual interests
*learn how to cultivate positive relationships
*volunteer according to individual interests by either physically going somewhere or digitally/spiritually supporting others
*deflect self-aggrandizement for positive recognition of others
*embrace acceptance
*eat to nourish and cleanse
*practice a spiritual  path
*laugh a lot

In my own story, my grandmother was my teacher...a radical and creative woman who created art  instead of worry about her life issues. She taught me  to transform my personal  monsters into myths via the arts.

 Because of her,  I wanted to always have elders in my life and in the 90's I interviewed a few of them from upstate NY and they mentored me to move toward aging with humility and humor.  The video ALWAYS CREATIVE tells their stories and can be found for free on You Tube to be seen in its entirety at your leisure.

The second video, LINDA MONTANO CELEBRATES MOTHER TERESA'S 100TH BIRTHDAY, is a performance I did in front of the Empire State Building in protest of the fact that they would not turn on the blue and white tower lights of the building  for Mother Theresa but turned on yellow lights for Sponge Bob. Their bad! I was there for 3 days, 3 hours a day, blessing people and many times being mistaken for the saint herself! I recommend theatre-training to anyone who would also like to experience walking in the shoes of someone they admire, just for a day!

Why did I choose to imitate Mother Teresa? I have been exploring myself as other personas, some imaginary, some real since 1976. About 7 years ago I developed a neurologic disorder called Cervical Dystonia, a spasming of neck muscles and cramping of other body muscles. One day in the middle of being totally twisted I said to myself, " I feel (actually look) like Mother Teresa, all bent over"!  and immediately as I thought this  the inner invitation to be her was born. Having gotten a permission from her nuns in the Bronx to act as if I were their foundress, I proceeded to appear as Mother Teresa for years.

I ask:  who was your positive elder-teacher in your childhood? Choose  one.  What did that elder give you? How have you used those teachings in your life?

PART 2

Dorothy Day was wise before she was old, i'm sure. Prayer is a wisdom-maker and so is suffering . I ask Dorothy Day to shine her wisdom on us and open those doors that yearn to feel wise light.

During the video LINDA MONTANO CELEBRATES MOTHER TERESA'S 100TH BIRTHDAY,  I will read a few sentences from the movie, ENTERTAINING ANGELS, a docudrama of the life of Dorothy Day, the founder along with Peter Marin, of the CATHOLIC WORKER and CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSES OF HOSPITALITY, as I stand with great honor in one of DOROTHY DAYS, HOUSES OF HOSPITALITY, ST FRANCIS HOUSE .

*CHRIST IS IN THE PEOPLE, READY TO FILL OUR EMPTINESS.

*YOU'RE A SMART WOMAN, MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND.

*DOROTHY'S PRAYER: YOU'VE GOT TO TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO. I WRITE BUT THAT'S NOT ENOUGH. PLEASE SHOW ME HOW. PLEASE.

*PEOPLE WHO ACT DONT THINK, PEOPLE WHO THINK DONT ACT.PETER  MARIN

*TAKE LESS SO OTHERS CAN HAVE MORE.

*FIND GOD. GOD IS AS CLOSE AS THE CLOSEST HUMAN BEING. ESPECIALLY THE POOR.

*THE POOR NEED A VOICE, YOU SHOULD START A NEWSPAPER. PETER MARIN

*JUSTICE AND PEACE GO TOGETHER. YOU CANT HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER.

*IF YOU FEED THE POOR YOU ARE A SAINT. IF YOU ASK WHY THEY ARE POOR YOU ARE A COMMUNIST. WE DO BOTH HERE AND WE ARE NEITHER SIANTS OR COMMUNISTS.

*HELP PEOPLE FEEL LOVED BY GOD.

*DOROTHY'S PRAYER: WHERE ARE YOU? WHY DONT YOU ANSWER ME? I NEED YOU. I'M EMPTY, I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE.

*I'VE BEEN DOING ALOT OF THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID LAST NIGHT. YOU'RE RIGHT. I'VE BEEN ARROGANT AND SELF RIGHTEOUS WITH THE INTENT OF DOING EVERYTHING MYSELF INSTEAD OF LETTING GOD WORK THROUGH ME.  AND I'M SORRY FOR ALL OF THAT. IVE BEEN THINKING OF WHAT IT IS THAT GOD WANTS ME TO DO. IT'S BEEN A VERY LONELY LIFE AND IVE BEEN LOOKING TO FILL THE EMPTINESS AND NOW I SEE IT BEGINS WITH THESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE MY MEETING PLACE WITH GOD. IF I WERE JUST GIVEN A CHANCE I KNOW THAT GOD WOULD FILL ME WITH LOVE, FILL ME THROUGH THESE PEOPLE AND I HOPE THAT I DONT HAVE TO DO IT ALONE. BUT IF YOU CHOOSE TO LEAVE I WILL UNDERSTAND.

*THE PAPER IS NEVER GOING TO BE WHAT YOU OR I WANT I T TO BE BUT I DONT THINK THAT GOD WILL JUDGE US ON HOW SUCCESSFUL WE WERE TO CHANGE THE WORLD BUT ON HOW FAITHFUL WE WERE IN SERVING THE POOR.

* DOROTHY DAY CONTINUED TO FEED THE HUNGRY, CLOTHE THE NAKED, SHELTER THE HOMELESS UNTIL HER DEATH IN 1980. A CHAMPION OF NON-VIOLENCE, SHE WAS JAILED REPEATEDLY FOR PROTESTING THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE AND THE WAR IN VIETNAM.

Quotes taken from the docu-drama  ENTERTAINING ANGELS.

 

MAHATMA GANDHI DREAMS OF MOTHER TERESA

My name is  MAHATMA GANDHI. Once upon a time I had a dream that MOTHER TERESA and I came back to  this Earth plain to give you some advice. We sat next to each other for a long, long time in a beautiful garden and looked at the BIG BOOK OF OUR LIFE and read our stories to each other about the last 40-50 years of our time here. This is what Mother Teresa said in my dream:
 My dearest Gandhiji, as you know I was a nun teaching in a girls school in India but whenever I left the school grounds I witnessed the poorest of the poor on the streets and this made a great impression on me. Here is how my second life's work happened. I was on a train going to a retreat in 1942 when I received an inner, guided message to leave my religious nuns who I loved very much, to leave teaching these young women in Calcutta, to leave my treasured vocation to begin a new way, that is, to embrace the reality of the poor and to serve them. It took many years for me to be excused from my other spiritual obligations but eventually, I became the foundress of a new order of nuns, The Missionaries of Charity. The first years I felt wonderful, filled with light  but when I was 50 years old a great sadness and sense of loneliness overtook me deep in my heart and confused me. I asked why? Why am I so tortured? Is it because I am sinful and weak. My priest spiritual directors helped me see that the darkness purified me of my imperfections and that it was an essential part of living out my mission of sharing the poor's spiritual poverty  because now I was poor like those I cared for. I began embracing spiritual suffering and actually experienced being spiritually unwanted, unloved and uncared for by God. This sounds terrible and it was until I understood how to transform the suffering into joy.

Nobody knew this, only my spiritual directors because I did not live like a pitiful person but adopted a radical ministry of hope, a radical ministry of joy, a radical ministry of pure faith, a radical ministry of glowing luminosity. I had a big, big inner secret. I looked totally happy and smiled with everyone but I was in inner agony. But only now could I understand the dying who felt unloved, only now could I understand the poor who were lonely, only now could I understand the unloved who were confused.

I bargained with God and said, if you hide my secret inner pain from others, I will actually BE LOVE, yes BE LOVE to all. If you hide my pain, I will BE COMPASSION, not only act compassionately but BE COMPASSION to all. If you hide my secret, I will SMILE AT ALL.

It took me time  to make peace with this bargain  but eventually the darkness itself became joy and my radiant smile hid my abyss of pain. I was like a nobody even to God and that was OK. I felt the tortures of my inner hell and that was OK.

My dearest Ghandhi, I hope this story has helped you understand my last years , my secret years.  and I leave you with a prayer I composed. It says

THE FRUIT OF SILENCE IS PRAYER
THE FRUIT OF PRAYER IS FAITH
THE FRUIT OF FAITH IS LOVE
THE FRUIT OF LOVE IS SERVICE
THE FRUIT OF SERVICE IS PEACE.

I NOW  bless you my brother . I bless all of you and I give you all a gift, MY SMILE.  Here TAKE IT !  And I sing this beautiful song for you, dear Ghandhi.(SONG)

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Then in my dream, I spoke to MOTHER TERESA and I said: " I want to come back to Mother Earth to tell those living in the 21st century to practice a new non violence which we call ahimsa. As you know I defeated the oppressors with non violence and now you who are living  right here right NOW must practice ahimsa and telling the truth  which we call satyagahara. Do not fear seeing the truth, communicating the truth and living the truth.  I want to tell the truth to all of you. First,  the truth about your food:

YOUR GMO FOOD
YOUR ANTIBIOTICED FOOD
YOUR CHEMICALLY SPRAYED FOOD
YORU FAUX FOOD
YOUR TRIPLE FRIED FOOD
YOUR ASPERTAINED FOOD
YOUR UNWASHED GOOD
YUR NUTRITION FREE FOOD
YOUR DISEASE CAUSING FOOD
YOUR INSECT DROPPING FOOD
YOUR FALSELY LABELED FOOD
YOUR EMPTY CALORIED FOOD
YOUR PESTICIEDED FOOD
YOUR POISONED BABY FOOD
YOUR MOLDY FOOD
YOUR BOTTOM FEEDER FOOD
YOUR FARMED FOOD
YOUR TRANSFAT FOOD
YOUR SUGURED FOOD
YOUR SALTED FOOD
YOUR FOOD THAT IS NOT FOOD.

I said in my dream, this is terrible, horrible and a nightmare! Let me sing a song for this world so it does not feel so bad about it's food.(SONG

Then, in my same dream, I said this is not all, it is not only food that I am warning the 21st century about, they must stop the following as well:

DUMBED DOWN TV-------STOP IT
FEAR BASED JOURNALISM-------STOP IT
INSIPID STAR GOSSIPING-------STOP IT
SENSATIONALIZED SELFING------STOP IT
NARCISSISTIC YOU TUBE MAKING------STOP IT
ADDICTIVE TEXTING------STOP IT
IDEA PIRATING------STOP IT
COMPETETIVE UPSTAGING------STOP IT
ARROGANT OVERPOSSESSING------STOP IT
UNNECESSARY CONSUMING------STOP IT
VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING------STOP IT
SELF WORSHIPPING------STOP IT
GREEDY OVERPRODUCING-----STOP IT

Now  I am so sad listening to my dream...... 

 

 For those living now, it is all real and  we must warn all the people. We must sing to them and show them how to heal MOTHER EARTH.....This is a song that I will sing , maybe it will help.  (SONG)

Mother earth hears us as we sing into her heart and we are now

HEALING FRACKED MOTHER EARTH
HEALING NUCLEAR WASTED MOTHER EARTH
HEALING IRRADIATED MOTHER EARTH
HEALING SINKHOLED MOTHER EARTH
HELAING OZONED MOTHER EARTH
HEALING TORNADOED MOTHER EARTH
HEALING TSUNAMIED MOTHER EARTH

 

OH MOTHER TERESA, Lets go back to sleep and dream some more . I will continue to send NON VIOLENCE to them even in my sleep and you can send SMILES. Then they will do their best, I know.

 

GOOD BYE EVERYONE,  GOOD BYE , NAMASTE, NAMASTE, GOOD BYE NAMASTE, GOOD BYE(SONG)

 

 

2014 RESUME

DESCRIPTION OF MY WORK/RECENT ACTIVITIES:

 

Linda Mary Montano is a performance art whose practices include endurance;  blurring the edge between art and life; witnessing the inherent humor of the human situation; death;  recognizing the autobiographical need to fix life through art; the aging body; changing the mind; and  using Catholic imagery to speak to the mystery of the everyday.

In 1976, Montano began videotaping herself as 7 different mythical personas, and in the last seven years, Montano has dopplegangered real living beings including Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan and the Woodstock  rock and roll artist, Paul McMahon. These morphings have allowed her to question the uncertainty of the human ego, the flexibility of shape shifting and the need for the skin-life to be expanded via  transformative processes.

Montano's newest book, YOU TOO ARE A PERFORMANCE ARTIST was published by SITE, SANTA FE where she had a 2013 retrospective of her Chakra endurance: 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART.  During those 14 years, she wore one color each year to honor the energy-field of the Chakra while performing  other private vows and disciplines. Her once a month visits for 7 years to THE NEW MUSEUM where she read palms/tarot and did ART/LIFE COUNSELING was the public component of this experience. Montano has taught Performance Art internationally and has written four other books about that subject. Her 7 years taking care of her father was her REAL ART.

 

THROAT CHAKRA . VISHUDDHA CHAKRA. ONCE DRAWING A YEAR FOR 7 YEARS WITH MY RIGHT HAND. ONE DRAWING A YEAR FOR 7 YEARS OF 7 CHAKRAS WITH MY LEFT HAND..THIS IS WITH MY RIGHT HAND

 

ART FOR THE POLE. A ONCE A MONTH INSTALLATION FOR A YEAR ...CO-CURATED MONTANO/DWYER ...THIS MONTH BY TIM LITZMAN

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ARTICLE FOR ECUMENICA JOURNAL BY MONTANO

"Dear Ecumenica Journal+Carolyn Roark:

 Thank you for inviting me to consider these words. Instead of choosing one word, I have chosen them all and here is my response to your invitation:

Ceremony: My first ceremonies were Catholic Church inspired. There I got a taste of the patriarchy at it's best......incense, pomp, packaged ecstasy, males processing in vestments meant for kings and queens and nuns relegated to the sidelines of humble-tasked teaching and herding of feraled-upstate-NY-children.

Communion: What all of us want is to belong, to be nurtured in community and communion with each other as co-conspirators, co-warriors, co-workers, co-belongers. This is a Neanderthaled response to weather, stampeding musk ox, the need for 3 meals a day and the desire to be connected to other sentient beings going through the exact old age, sickness and death saga called life. In Catholicism, COMMUNION becomes the highest sacrament and the best of everything. When the nuns had convinced me that when I received COMMUNION, that I would be receiving Jesus's real BODY, BLOOD, SOUL and DIVINITY, I would faint in Church after receiving the HOST, and remember doing so when I was actually in my late 50's. And yes, I was post-menopausal then and it wasn't because of that! And at 7, it wasn't because I had been fasting since 6pm the night before and fainted from physical hunger. And believe me when I say that I've seen BLEEDING HOSTS in my travels so I guess fainting was not such an inappropriate response after all!

Ecumenical: This is the best way, the tolerant way, the understanding way to live with, endure, put up with the belief's, practices and acting out of all practitioners of the sacred but our tolerant good behavior only lasts until we stumble on a "religion" that does things we think abominable!

Holy: Holy is right brain ecstasy that is "produced" when the thinking mind is out of commission. See Jill Bolte Taylor's STROKE OF GOOD LUCK on You Tube.

Redemption: What is right is right until it is re-seen from an accepted authority as  lacking in wisdom or compassion. My therapist just last night re-deemed me from a family of origin belief about love that is no longer tenable for me. REDEMPTION lasts when the new belief is repeated until imbedded in one's blood.

Religion: A complex theory that keeps and gives. It keeps the believer from having to create a way. It gives a free ride to anyone buying the ticket it sells. Artists sometimes think they can start their own and often do because keeping and giving are understood differently by these zealots of the Sensitive.

Revelation: By cooling the left brain with considerable finesse, it is possible to hear, see, smell and taste the unseen, unheard, the untaste-able and stinky.

With all due respect and apologies for any heresies,

Linda Mary Montano
Performance Artist
June 2014"

a narcissist writes a poem

a narcissist


a narcissist will do ANYTHING  to be

seen

heard

disagreed with

offend

show their talents

show their anger

fix everyone

be the best

be the first

be the most important

WHY?

incorrect motivation

CURE?

nothing

WORKSHOP: ART/THE SPIRITUAL/THE ORDINARY

 

WORKSHOP: ART/THE SPIRITUAL/THE ORDINARY

LINDA MARY MONTANO, a performance artist who uses duration, Catholic imagery and humor in her art, presents a workshop based on the theory that our life can be transformed via self-designed rituals, intense and safe actions of rememberance, dedication to present time/past memory and the grace of a supportive community of instant friends who also are participating in this energy "family" of those wishing to be inspired and changed as art.
Sound and movement warm-ups, videos of Montano's past performances and guided art directives for each participant are the foundational methods for all of Montano's workshops where carefulness and safety are practiced and maintained throughout the experience.
The goal is that we all go home with a way, an attitude toward everyday life that is sacred and ordinary and do-able.
Bring a wig and one very intuitive "prop".

DIEGO MARTIN INTERVIEWS LINDA MARY MONTANO: DISANGUISHING MOURNING

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Desanguishing mourning

Interview:  Linda Mary Montano emails with Diego Martin June 2014

In the following interview Montano and Martin will explore the three fundamental aspects of the investigation I’m conducting (performance, ritual and psychotherapy) in the context of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Master’s degree. I’m trying to link these aspects with your personal point of view, and in particular with the work I’ve selected as a case study, “Mitchell’s Death”. Diego Martin

 

DIEGO: Starting with the performance, because it is the aspect which includes all the other aspects I’m studying, I would like to ask you when and why did you choose this way as a representation element? Which specific aspects do you think it has in your particular case?

LINDA;Thank you for your interest in my work.  My backstory or personal history is the reason I made a performance of mourning. For example:

I grew up non verbal and looked for a language in the "actions" of others who I observed and imitated as life-art and even now I do this by becoming  Bob Dylan, Mother Teresa  etc...

 In 1976 I made a video LEARNING TO TALK (free on You Tube) where I became 7 people, while sitting in front of a video camera for a year.

After my ex-husband was murdered in 1977, I sat in front of the same camera and told the story of his death which I read from something I had written. I "performed" the mourning as art because I had only those skills taught to me by myself as a child because I was thinking life was a theatre played by all of the actors and  family in front of me; I "performed" mourning as a Catholic who went to Church and got  into mystical states of  ecstasy because of the message, the incense, the pageantry, the suffering of being a woman and not being included. Art gave me a chance to somewhat re-create Catholic rituals and Mass my way and I became a private and functioning "priest", something I always wanted to be.

 

DIEGO: Historically and geographically it seems strange how, particularly in the seventies and eighties, many artists began working on the U.S. West Coast, influenced by spirituality and ritual. ¿Could you tell us, from your experience, what was going on there?

LINDA: California is wild and different and close to Asia so the reason for the difference is because of this Oriental influence of process and space and ego annihilation.  Also at that time EVERYTHING  was happening: drugs, women's liberation, Haight Ashbery, rock and roll and total upheaval of everything that had  been taught or heard or done in the past. Rules were no longer necessary.

 

DIEGO: Going back to the performance, if we divide it (roughly) in theoretical aspects and conceptual aspects, which sources or models have been fundamental in the configuration of them both –theory and concept– in your production?

LINDA: Then it was just a total accident of my grief. Now, in retrospect, i'm sure art historians can do the theory-concept analysis, given my explanation of some of my history.

 

DIEGO: About your action in Mitchell’s Death, I would like you to explain it using spiritual, symbolic, ritual and emotional terms.

LINDA: My actions were spiritually based on my inclination toward sainthood and Catholic statues of saints so the close up of my face was in my subconscious, something I had imagined or seen in Holy Cards depicting Mary and female saints. You have to remember I was born in 1942 when the role of women not only in the Catholic Church but also in society was a joke. In the church, women gained "power" by becoming  actors of mystical ecstacy.....by becoming anorexics and hysterics and psychics and radical prophets. Then the church listened to them and came to them for answers or wisdom or protection even! So I unconsciously at that time, was able to pull out of my unconscious, the need to use my face as a statue; my need to imitate the chant I was praying because I was a member of a Zen community at that time;  my need to tell all of my pain to the world because I had no skill in telling my family or friends because honestly, I had zero social or verbal skills or a trust that my voice was even use-able or hear-able.

My family loved music and my dad had a band and my mother sang in the band so we valued music and listening to life ....we did not use "words" to communicate but intuited via vibrational frequencies!!!! So chanting my pain was totally natural for me. And I did the first level of emotional clearing...the spiritual-emotional level. Now at 72 I am doing very intense primal therapy and believe it or not, learning how to do real emotional grief and am finally learning how to feel and cry, not like a "saint" but like an ordinary person! It is exhilarating.  You see, art is great but it is not enough. The whole picture is enough. Art allows you to cry for everyone and with everyone. Life allows you to hold yourself in your own  arms and feel grief, joy etc.

 

DIEGO: Referring to the text you tell during the action as a mantra, could you explain to us what it is about?

LINDA: The text is the actual story of the murder and what happened for a week after the murder. At the time I did not know it was a murder but now I know. The truth is, we heal by telling our pain and I healed the only way I knew how, by making art and by using the powerful images, sounds and performance devices that are used in Catholic sacramental services because I had experienced great states of transfiguration as a child.  If it works, use it, and at the time of Mitchell's death, I needed to get high, to become ecstatic, because the pain was so great and only high religious "ritual" would soothe me, so I made it happen and as I said before, I was the "priest".
 

DIEGO: Concerning Mitchell’s Death, and using an acupuncture manual as a reference, I’ve tried to decode the configuration of the needles on your face. Could you explain the needles’ positions and what where you looking for?

LINDA: Diego, this is so funny and makes me want to marry you! At that time, I was studying with a very intense and powerful Guru from India who was also a medical doctor. His name is Dr. Ramamurti Mishra. He allowed us to have great powers of experimentation with all of his teachings and after he started using acupuncture, I also did it on myself and actually some others but I knew absolutely NOTHING about the where, when and how because I refused to learn anything that was not totally spontaneous and intuitive. This is no refection on my teacher and his teachings because he was a scientist and scholar as well as a highly enlightened person; it's just how I always do things. So it was as they say, hit and miss! I placed them wherever I wanted but only on my face. But when I had the acupuncture points tattooed on my upper legs many years later, the tattoo artist, used a book!

 

DIEGO: I wonder if the performance we’re talking about was the first where you used your art in a therapeutic way. What did you feel during the action, and in its aftermath?

LINDA: No, not the first. Look at my website and read THE CHAKRA STORY. Therapy was always my goal, always my path , always my style. If it didn't help me, reveal something to me, give me energy from the audience's attention, then I didn't do it. 

DIEGO: We’ve been talking about the performance itself, but which was the way (or processes) you went thorough to arrive to it?

LINDA: At that time I was living with an internationally renowned composer, Pauline Oliveros, and I know that her support and love and her incredible influence on my ability to "compose" grief, was instrumental in my making this healing film, MITCHELL'S DEATH.

 

DIEGO:  How did oriental philosophy influence you and your art?

LINDA: It gave me permission to be  authentic, sparse, more interested in life than art, more interested in healing than my pocketbook or money. Sparse is always my style of life and communication but I see reflections and encouragement for "sparse" in Oriental theory.

 

DIEGO: Could you describe, in general terms, what is your therapy-art about, and the way you apply it to yourself and to the others?

LINDA: We are allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll  starved for love, for attention, for presence, for life, for mother's breast, for father's attention, for kindness, for mastery, for song, for inclusion, for laughter,  for safety. My art is about giving myself what I need and these are some of my needs. Much of my art has given this to me.

 

 

DIEGO:To end this interview I’d like to ask you about a phrase which I’ve selected as leit motiv of my work, to know if it triggers any thoughts, or if you find in it something linked to your work: “Which I only understand in part, I feel absolutely”.

LINDA: It triggers a question: Diego, tell me about the most challenging event from your childhood?

 

THE BEGINNING

 

POSTSCRIPT: 

 

WORKSHOP: ART/THE SPIRITUAL/THE ORDINARY

LINDA MARY MONTANO, a performance artist who uses duration, Catholic imagery and humor in her art, presents a workshop based on the theory that our life can be transformed via self-designed rituals, intense and safe actions of rememberance, dedication to present time/past memory and the grace of a supportive community of instant friends who also are participating in this energy "family" of those wishing to be inspired and changed as art.
Sound and movement warm-ups, videos of Montano's past performances and guided art directives for each participant are the foundational methods for all of Montano's workshops where carefulness and safety are practiced and maintained throughout the experience.
The goal is that we all go home with a way, an attitude toward everyday life that is sacred and ordinary and do-able.
Bring a wig and one very intuitive "prop".

THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE IS FOR SALE: A WORK OF ART

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  -----                                           THE ART/LIFE INSTITUE ( A WORK OF ART) IS FOR SALE-----------------------------------------------


LINDA MARY MONTANO, performance artist, is selling  THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE in Kingston NY,  the Rondout area.  Many performances have happened there, many workshops, SUMMER SAINT CAMPS, creative actions and it also contains built -in furniture "sculptures" made by Montano.

The address is  185 Abeel Street, Kingston NY 12401

It is  one story with  a live in attic area, is 1324 sq feet on both floors, is mixed use (live and business), has good parking, new roof and is walking distance to galleries, restaurants and the Rondout Creek & Hudson River.

Perfect for artist/writer/ business/ winter sports/ summer hiking/ boat person/kayaker  or anyone wanting to be in Upstate New York!

Asking  price: $149,000

Contact: lindamontano@hotmail.com

or before 7PM:   845 246 4482
      
      

FRANCES MADESON WRITES ABOTU LINDA MARY MONTANO

Originally published @ www.burquemedia.com

Reality Check by: Frances Madeson

 

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Submitted by BurqueMedia on Sat, 06/28/2014 - 03:14

Through the scrim of memory I see the school psychologist’s flat outstretched hands hovering over the image, hands large enough to touch all the puzzle pieces. He turns the funny horse that had been balanced on its lush tail, its four brown legs sticking out sideways. Turns it so the horse is upright, standing normally.

I'd taken the puzzle apart and reassembled it half a dozen times under his scrutiny, maybe more, but could never get that horse to stand up on its own four feet. It didn't matter how I varied my method, if I jumbled the pieces in the box, worked the frame first, or began with the internal pieces, this horse consistently defied the laws of gravity.

“Do you want to try once more?” he asked in no tone in particular.

I nodded my assent. Concentrating, I slowed all my motions down, but I had the same result. He scratched a note on his form, ticked a box...something.

“Let me try again.” And this time I did it lightning quick, trying to trick this stubborn horse into behaving. But sideways it remained, its proud head held high.

And he, my examiner, was out of patience. He slapped his palms down on the puzzle and rotated it once to the left, counter-clockwise.

The horse stood tall with a mere pivot of his wrists. I cried out, my mind blown. There it was, a horse as it should be!

In my mind, this was always a story about my own misperception—how all the puzzle pieces could be right in front of me, and I still wouldn't be able to see the obvious. A humbling story. A story about my lack. My incapacity.
But that changed when I came to New Mexico.

I'd arrived in Santa Fe just weeks before. Though busy settling in, I'd seen a calendar listing for a Linda Montano performance art piece at SITE Santa Fe, which I immediately prioritized. The piece was part of the closing of the Always Creative show, and it was a counterpoint to a similar piece she'd performed months previous at the opening called Singing My Heart Out—spectacular entrances and exits, the stuff of theater! Here was the irresistible enticement:

On Friday, May 17 from 10am to 5pm, SITE will host Linda Montano's closing performance: Singing My Heart In. For the second part of this endurance performance, the artist will be stationed in the front of SITE singing along to the music of Raka Mukherjee. Montano will descend on a scissor lift from the top of the building, once an hour for seven hours until she has reached the ground.

I arrived around noon and took a seat on a folding chair under the sky white with heat, to behold a wondrous vision of a seventy-something Montano up near the rooftop of SITE, singing along to the ragas, exactly as billed. The elevated platform, her undulating voice, everything all melty in the heat of the day--it was pure, sun-drenched Art.

Inside SITE too, the exhibit was dazzling. One room contained clothes she had worn for seven years, each year its own color and only that color, seven colors associated with the chakras. A purple garment hung from the ceiling with a pile of all the purple clothes worn during the purple year, even underwear, on the floor beneath it. Another for orange, red, and so on.

There was a film in black and white, a close-up of her face dotted with acupuncture needles. She speaks about Mitchell, her ex-husband. He was murdered, she responds to the violence in a stream-of-consciousness monologue. Her anguish is palpable, especially when she says his name...Mitchell, I remember the last time I saw you.... Mitchell, how can you be gone? Mitchell...

Her pieces are vehicles to stratas of experience otherwise unobtainable. Her explorations are like inter-planetary voyages, long in duration, devotional. Crazy to live like that, I thought. Crazy not to, I countered. Outside, I bowed to Linda. Hand on my heart I blew her kisses. I think I even curtsied.

The next day she'd arranged to do "art counseling" sessions, which now that I'd encountered her through her work seemed too valuable an opportunity to miss. But I almost did. By the time I'd arrived at the museum all of the slots had been allotted. About to leave, a bit downhearted I confess, the curator told me there was to be a book signing of Montano's new workbook titled: You Too Are A Performance Artist, and I could meet her then and perhaps speak with her for a few unhurried moments.

She soon came out and we sat together at a small table in SITE's lobby, her book vibrating on the table between us. We talked together intimately. I seized the chance to tell her about the new comic novel that I'd begun composing, set in an art museum. I asked her for her wisdom about insight, perspective and perception, anything she cared to share. She in turn asked me a series of questions which before long evinced the story about the puzzle of the sideways horse. Fifty years later I was still seeking a reality check, but this time from an expert in reality.

Through her coaxing the story fleshed itself out. Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School. Skipping from the 2nd to the 4thgrade. Was I mature enough for such a big leap? Reading comprehension, math tests—all those went swimmingly. And then the damned and damning horse puzzle.

Linda, who'd been actively listening, asking small questions, offering prompts, finally said, “I am ready to sign your copy of You Too Are A Performance Artist.” And I fell silent while she inscribed it. I thanked her and left without reading it. Outside in the scalding light I was flooded with relief and gratitude when I opened to the page where she wrote these words:For Flying Horse Woman.

Frances Madeson is a fiction writer and visionary activist, in that her activism is aimed toward an imaginative vision of Eudaimonia.

(Thank You Frances- We Love YOU.)
All Rights Reserved C 2014