the neverending land(e)scape

Letter from the Word Arts and Cultures/Dance Graduate Students Organization, in support of Professor David Shorter.

 

TO:

Mark Yudof, President, University of California

Dr. Andrew Leuchter, Chair, UCLA Academic Senate

 

Dear President Yudof and Dr. Leuchter,

 

We, the Graduate Student Organization of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (WAC/D GSO), would like to express our concern for and solidarity with our faculty colleague, Associate Professor David Delgado Shorter. In our view, the recent questioning of Dr. Shorter’s teaching methods has raised serious concerns about academic policies and pedagogical freedom at the University of California. The class in question is “Tribal Worldviews”, which Dr. Shorter taught in the Winter Quarter of 2012. This course explored indigenous worldviews in relation to colonialism, globalization, and media from a variety of interdisciplinary approaches and cross-cultural analysis. The course has been offered for three years and this last quarter happened to include a website critical of Israel within a long list of optional research materials for several other topics in the seminar. 

 

The AMCHA Initiative, a group that “endeavors to inform the California Jewish community about manifestations of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students on colleges and university campuses” lodged a complaint to the University of California administrators and faculty. AMCHA contended that Dr. Shorter’s actions amounted to the promotion and advocacy of a boycott of Israel. On April 20th the organization stated on its website that they had “achieved an important victory” based on the response from UC administrators regarding their complaint which implied that Dr. Shorter had in fact committed an error in judgment and would not repeat the mistake. The AMCHA article spoke of Shorter as being among UC faculty “who use their classroom and university resources for anti-Israel proselytizing.” We find such a statement to be patently misleading and the actions of the UC administration in this matter a betrayal of the principles of academic freedom within the University of California system.

 

The inappropriate and short-sighted reaction to this incident by UC Administrators, whose job it is to protect and encourage pedagogical innovation is alarming. Dr. Shorter’s insightful and provocative approach to learning gives primacy to the development of students’ ability to engage in rigorous critical analysis and intellectual self-reflection important for creating substantive solutions to seemingly intractable, real-world issues, such as the rights of indigenous cultures. 

 

The key rationale for the University’s criticism is the fact that Dr. Shorter is a signatory to the advocacy group whose website he listed. This site, however, was an optional resource for an optional assignment, and at no time did Dr. Shorter advocate for support of the website’s political group. More importantly, this logic entirely evades the fundamental issue of whether or not study of divergent or even controversial political views positively cultivates intelligent and rational consideration of the relevant issues of the course, which Dr. Shorter has kept open for debate over the three years in which he has taught the class.

 

As you know, the press has now taken this story national, primarily because of how this case reflects on the very function of our institution. In reaction to the controversy, salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald plainly and insightfully pointed to the case’s central issue as it relates to the broader populace:

 

“My real question is this: what kind of person goes to an academic institution and then demands to be shielded from political ideas that they find objectionable? Of all places, academia is supposed to permit and encourage the challenging of one’s assumptions and beliefs. At least in theory, that’s the prime value of studying at a university: learning how to think critically, which requires subjecting one’s views to rigorous dispute. The petulant entitlement needed to demand that nobody in that setting ever cite or mention objectionable political views is just staggering; it also reveals a severe lack of confidence in the validity of one’s own views.”

 

As emerging scholars we are particularly alarmed by the inappropriate handling of the matter as the difficult economic climate in the State of California has challenged the core principals of higher learning, knowledge production, and civic engagement. We are witnessing these values, the very principles upon which the University of California was founded, being relentlessly eviscerated by the rapid corporatization and authoritarian paradigm being foisted upon the UC system and the hundreds of thousands of students and employees who give the system its true social value and are the very raison d’etre of the system itself.

 

As graduate students deeply committed to academic freedom and these core principles, we steadfastly support Dr. David Delgado Shorter in his stand against any and all efforts to censor his coursework or denigrate his tireless efforts to improve the quality of learning at UCLA and beyond and we join the California Scholars for Academic Freedom in insisting upon an official review of the inappropriate way in which UCLA’s academic leaders handled this matter.

 

Sincerely,

 

Members and alumni of the Graduate Student Organization of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance

 

Lorena Alvarado 

Samuel M. Anderson                       

Jacinta Arthur de la Maza           

Feriyal Aslam                                   

Emily Beattie 

Harmony Bench (alumna) 

April Rose Burnam 

Rosemary Candelario (alumna)

Alissa Cardone (alumna)

I-Wen Chang

Chey Chankethya

Deborah Cohen                       

Anna Creagh          

Alison D’Amato                       

Jennifer Monique Delgado

Sharna Fabiano

Cesar Garcia

Doran George                     

Maria Gillespie (alumna)         

Peter Haffner

Claudia Hernandez

William Michael Jelani Hamm

Mana Hayakawa

Elyan Hill

Ana Paula Hofling

Sarah Jacobs

Neelima Jeychandran

Sarah Leddy

Cynthia Ling Lee (alumna)

Dana Lea Marterella

Andy Martinez

Leonard Melchor

Carol McDowell

Olive Mckeon

Meena Murugesan                  

Nguyen Nguyen                                               

Lorenzo Perillo                                          

Jose Reynoso

Cristina Rosa (alumna)

Cedar Bough Saeji

Michael Sakamoto

Mathew Sandoval

Carolina San Juan (alumna)

Carl Schottmiller

Angeline Shaka (alumna)

Yehuda Sharim

Joseph Small

Alexandra Shilling

Pallavi Sriram

Šara Stranovsky

Elaine Sullivan

Rita Valente                                                  

Andrea Wang

Sarah Wilbur           

Alessandra Williams

Kat Williams

Sara Wolf

Allison Wyper (alumna)

In my last class of the course “ART100. Issues in Contemporary Art” (taught by prof. Carole Ann Klonarides at UCLA), we had the visit of “Kathe Kollwitz” (1), one of the founders of Guerrilla Girls. With a poignant sense of humor, she outlined the path of the group, since its first activities (about 25 years ago), and how the group as gone from being seen as “noise” in the art world, to artists respected and invited by museums, galleries and universities. “Kollwitz” also told us about the difficulties they had to deal with, inside and outside of the group, since the very beginning. One of the first issues they had to solve inside the group referred their own name – Guerrilla Girls – in particular the term “Girls”. “Kollwitz” told us how the young generation of members had to convince the elder generation that to use the word “Girl”, instead of “Women”, was empowering, instead of lessening. An example of the “problems” the group has yet to face in their relation to the “outside” world, is the fact that, despite their hard and persistent work, the world of art (the world at large) have not changed enough in what concerns giving women the same opportunities and the same voice as men.

These two aspects in particular came immediately to my mind in the beginning of this week, when I came across the series Because I’m a Girl, broadcasted online by CNN (cfr. CNN, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2011d). The series displays (I am using this word intentionally), according to the caption of the first episode, “four girls [living] in different parts of the world, to explore how their different lives reflect our diverse plan[e]t” (CNN, 2011a). Because I’m a Girl is able to illustrate different cultures and different ways of being in the world, and it raises consciousness about the achievements that were not yet accomplished in the fight for women’s rights. Nonetheless, and despite the “good intentions”, it is also clear to me that these girls (and, consequently, the girls/women of the world) are not being empowered, although (apparently) they are given a voice. From my perspective, Because I’m a Girl conveys its message of celebration of world cultures diversity mixed with the need consciousness raising for women’s rights from the perspective of western patriarchic values.

In Because I’m a Girl we are presented to Capucine Mamak, Sharal Christina, Abril La Torre, Dorcas Kanini, whose age ranges between 13 and 15 years old. The show is divided in four episodes. In the first, the girls show us how they start their day, before getting to school. In episode two, the girls talk about what they like and dislike in school and in their education and also about their friends. In episode three we have a glimpse of what each of the girls does during their free time, after school. Finally, in episode four, girls are asked who is their female role-model, what is their perspective about the status of women in their societies, and what they want for their future.

The patriarchic western values and paradigms are present since the very beginning. The girls were selected to reflect western stereotypes of particular cultures. In addition, their lives are depictured according to a “westernized” perspective of how a girl should live and behave. With the exception of Dorcas (about whom I will speak more next), the girls selected are from “westernized” middle class families and they all have access to education. In their families, the role of the mother as the one that, in the couple, has the specific function of taking care of the children is also present. The role of the father as caretaker is not brought into the picture. Again, the only exception here is Dorcas, who is an orphan since she was 1 year old, and she lives with her grandparents: she presents us her grandfather.

Dorcas stands in the show as the stereotype of the skinny-poor-African-girl-stereotype. She is 14 years old and lives in Murteni Village (Eastern Kenya). Although she goes to school, she has to walk for one hour, from her village, in the mountains, to get to school. And it happens that when she gets there, the school is closed because the teachers are on strike. She returns home to take care of the house. She says that she would rather be studying, as her friends from rich families, who have someone to do the household tasks for them. Dorcas wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Her female role-model is the Peace Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who argues for women’s rights and advocates that women should have the right to decide about their lives.

Despite her exotic name and looks, Capucine Mamak (who is 13 years old and lives in London [United Kingdom] with her mother and sisters) matches the stereotype of the British teenager: she studies in a only-girls school, after classes she audits for a school play, where girls play male and female roles (it is interesting to notice that the director of the play is a man); when she gets home she does her homework, practices her clarinet and has dinner (sometimes she lays the table). Her favorite hobby is to hand-out with her friends, go to the park or go shopping. Her role-model is her mother, who shows her that, when determined to, people can achieve their goals.

From my perspective, the show’s argument for women’s rights conveyed in particular through the live and words of Sharal. She is 15 years old, and she attends an only-girls school. The fact that she studies in this kind of school could be read only as a cultural trace that remained from United Kingdom’s presence in India. Nonetheless, there is more to it. Sharal says that it is more comfortable for her to learn with other girls, instead of being in a co-ed group. The separation between genders appears in this case as a protection. In a culture where, as Sharal says, men are given more freedom than women, and in which women should not express their opinions or feelings (in particular in the presence of men), to study only with other girls provides them a more comfortable learning situation. Sharal values her education: she acknowledges, unlike her parents, she is lucky for having access to continuous and good quality education. She also says that she wants to continue studying: she wants to go to college.

In what concerns relationships, the producer (a woman) asks Sharal to talk about arranged marriage – a situation, which is very common in India. Sharal answers that she heard that in fact arranged marriage is better than love marriage, as in the later people tend to fight more, and in the former, people are in the process of getting to know one another and they talk through their problems.

With her sincere and simple, but also direct answers, Sharal puts cultural differences between east and west in perspective, while she is also able to catch the viewers’ attention to unsolved problems related to women’s rights. Despite this, it is with Abril, and her perspective about how women should organize their life path, that the last episode ends.

Abril is 14 years old. Pretty, talkative and easy-going, determined, and aiming a career in the arts world, maybe as musical theater actress (she likes to dance), she fulfills the stereotype of the Argentinean woman (in a way, she resembles Madonna’s Evita, doesn’t she?). Although Abril says her role-model is her mother, she refers to the president of Argentina – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – as an example of how women should manage their lives. According to Abril, as Cristina Kirchner, women should be able to have a career and a family – and this is what Abril wants for herself as well. She also says that women should start by focusing on their careers, to have a good job, that fulfills them, and also travel. Only after that women should start thinking about settling down to have a family, and raise her children.

Even without knowing, Abril lays out the stereotype of the “perfect” western woman, who has a successful career, takes care of her house, raises her children, and makes it all look easy. Closing with Abril’s thoughts, the message of the show is clear: this is what every girl should aim for; this is how a girl should be like.

In short, it is clear for me that Because I am a Girl’s authors wanted to use the term “girl” in the title to convey a sense of “empowerment”, which would happen because these girls are given a change to speak up their minds. Nevertheless, that sense does not come across the series, since the perspective that underlies the narrative is based on the western patriarchic system of values. As “Kathe Kollwitz” said in her presentation in class: there is still a lot of work to be done in the (I would add “sincere”) fight for women’s rights.

Notes

(1) I am phrasing the artist’s name between quotation marks as a way to acknowledge that this is not her real name. As the members of the group have established careers in the art world, they chose to hidden their “real” identities and, by this means, avoid having their professional careers jeopardized by their activist work. Hence, when wearing their gorilla masks, Guerrilla Girls respond for the name of a dead female artist.

References

CNN. 2011a. Four girls, four views of the world (http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2011/10/27/pkg-7bn-because-i-am-a-girl-pt1.cnn.html [posted on October 27 2011, accessed on November 3 2011]). CNN.com – Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News (http://www.cnn.com/).

CNN. 2011b. ‘Because I’m a girl’ goes to school (http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2011/10/27/pkg-7bn-because-i-am-a-girl-pt2.cnn.html [posted on October 27 2011, accessed on November 3 2011]). CNN.com – Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News (http://www.cnn.com/).

CNN. 2011c. ‘Because I’m a Girl’ goes outside class (http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2011/10/31/pkg-7bn-because-i-am-a-girl-pt3.cnn.html [posted on October 31 2011, accessed on November 3 2011]). CNN.com – Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News (http://www.cnn.com/).

CNN. 2011d. Thoughts from ‘Because I’m a Girl’ (http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2011/10/31/pkg-7bn-because-i-am-a-girl-pt3.cnn.html [posted on October 31 2011, accessed on November 3 2011]). CNN.com – Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News (http://www.cnn.com/).

On Wednesday, October 26, I attended the conversation Modern Art in Los Angeles – Women Curators in Los Angeles; an event included in Pacific Standard Time program. The conversation took place in the Getty Center’s Harold M. Williams Auditorium. It featured three “pioneering” women curators – Jane Livingston, Barbara Haskell, and Helene Winer –, who, also according to The Getty Research Institute webpage, were part of a generation that “emerged as leading voice[…] in the rapidly growing Southern California art scene” (The Getty Research Institute, 2011). The deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, Andrew Perchuk, moderated the conversation.
The event had a bittersweet effect on me. On the one hand, it was exciting to hear those women talking about how it was to grow up in Southern California in a time of artistic and social change and how they came to become curators. It was also engaging to hear them describe the happy and unhappy moments, and the challenges they had to face at the time. On the other hand, it was frustrating to realize that I was not, in fact, fully participating in the conversation. I missed to many references. In addition, both moderator and speakers tended to mention people (artists and other curators) only by their first name, which made it more difficult for me to follow the conversation.

Nonetheless, I was able to notice an important detail: (almost) exclusively male artists and male curators were mentioned. During the conversation, I became increasingly aware that I was watching a materialization of the accounts presented in many of the text I have been reading in the context of the Feminist Media Art class. It became clear that, in fact, during the 1960’s and 1970’s, only men were significant and celebrated agents in the arts circuit – they were, in fact, perpetuated as the “genius male artists”, which is often referenced in the articles I have been reading (for instance, Arlene Raven’s Picture This or Why is Art Important? [cfr. Raven, 1982]). In the first decades of their careers, Livingstone, Haskell, and Winer were living and working in a men’s world. Their professors at school, the artists they exhibited, the curators they worked for, and, in Winer’s case, her faculty colleagues at Pomona University, were mostly (not to say all) men. To survive in that world was a challenge which could only be overcome with hard work and some humor. Winer’s anecdote about being asked to pour tea for her faculty colleagues at a faculty meeting, just because she was a woman, and how she dealt with it (in the first occasion, she invited a male colleague to do it for her and in, the second, they both did it), or Haskell’s account on how she promoted herself from “curatorial assistant” to “assistant curator” (she just started signing the letters according to the position she felt she should occupy), were examples of that.

I was disappointed by the fact that no women artists were mentioned in the talk. And I was surprised to hear Livingston say that she did not think about it at the time, because she was immersed in a context where she did not even considered the need to include women artists as part of an exhibition. Nonetheless, I cannot hold the speakers responsible for the circumstances that the conversation reflected. The fact that they took the challenge of working in the art circuit’s male dominated environment, and they managed to raise above it, was (and is) already an extremely relevant achievement. By embracing their careers and fighting for their place in such gendered world, Livingstone, Haskell, and Winer, were already (and continue) contributing to the “cause” of female participation and claim for a significant voice in the North-American contemporary art sphere.

References
Raven, Arlene. 1982. Picture This or Why Is Art Important?. [No place], The Judy Chicago Wold & Image Network.

The Getty Research Institute. 2011. “Modern Art in Los Angeles: Women Curators in Los Angeles (Getty Research Institute)”. The Getty [The Getty Center Official Website] (http://www.getty.edu). Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Trust. [URL: http://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/events/women_curators/index.html (accessed on October 27th 2011)].

Last Sunday, I attended my fourth Pacific Standard Time event. After the poignant performance and installation Peep Totter Fly, by Cheri Gaulke, at LACE, and the exhibitions Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, at the Hammer Museum, and Doin’it in Public: Feminist and Art at the Woman’s Building, at the Otis College of Art and Design, it was time to drive to the Orange County Museum and attend the symposium and performances that inaugurated the exhibition State of Mind: New California Art 1970. I had the privileged opportunity to hear the curators Constance M. Lewallen and Karen Moss introducing the concept of the exhibition and the criteria for the selection of artists and works, as well as to hear artists such as Tom Marioni, Paul Kos, Barbara T. Smith, Bonnie Shank, Suzanne Lacey, and Eleanor Antin, who featured in the exhibition, talking about their work. There were two panels, the first dedicated to explore the relationships and affinities between art circles from North and South California, and the second dedicated to Feminist Art – a movement considered instrumental in the artistic transformations taking place in California, during the late Sixties and early Seventies.

Despite the richness of the presentations and following discussions, today I am not reporting on the contents of the symposium. Nor I am going to describe in detail the pieces that featured in the exhibition. As someone interested in curatorial and arts production issues, I want to list some aspects I find to be common to the three exhibitions of Pacific Standard Time, and which, unfortunately, seem to lay under the category of “curatorial don’ts”, as well as questions that these exhibitions, and/or the events associated with their openings raised in me.

1. Curatorial Don’ts
a. To be explicit about the “bad reasons” that lead one to put up a show: either in the introductory note by Lewallen and Moss, when opening the symposium of State of Mind, or in the LA Weekly from September 23rd-29th (cfr. Sestanovich, 2011), almost exclusively dedicated to the Pacific Standard Time program, the message that is conveyed is that, more than a grandiose retrospective that aims to celebrate the art produced in LA from the mid 1940’s to the 1980’s, in its quality, specificity and boldness, curators are more interested in stressing that the work produced at that time (and now) is as good or even better than the art works being produced in New York.

This leads me to the second “don’t”:

b. Not being able to choose: maybe because they are afraid of being accused of leaving some artist or movement underrepresented (that is, to be accused of making the same mistake that art historians seem to have made, when they choose the East Coast Art over the West), each exhibition presents an unbearable amount of works of art, that do not dialogue with, but impose themselves to the exhibition spaces, and overwhelm the spectators. The result is that one (the spectator) cannot have the pleasure to enjoy and fully take in the works that one is being presented to, and the artists and movements end up underrepresented, as the pieces smother each other, their power being erased under the weight of overaccumulation.

2. Question(s) – maybe, I can summarize all my questions into a more comprehensive one (for now):
How can one recreate/articulate art works, in the realm of a retrospective/reconstructive project, in such a way that it becomes meaningful not only for the curators and artists who are putting themselves into the work, but also to spectators, in particular to those from generations and backgrounds that do not share the same knowledge or experience as the artists and curators responsible for the organization of the exhibition/event?

I hope to be able to explore the “don’ts” and question(s) outlined above in a more extensive and informed essay, soon.

Reference
Sestanovich, Beth. 2011. LA Weekly. Art Issue 2011. Freaks and Weirdos: Pacific Standard Time Celebrates L.A. Artists, from the Visionaries to the Oddballs. Vol. 33, No. 44, September 23rd-29th 2011.

The lobby of LACE gallery is crowded and hot. People huddle to get closer to Cheri Gaulke’s installation Peep Totter Fly. This piece consists of 16 individual white shelves that seem to float against an equally white wall, which they fill almost completely. In each shelf, a pair of point red vinyl high hill shoes, whose size is inscribed, also in red, in the shelf. Above the first two rows of shelves, a little bit above our eyes, a plasma screen shows a video: two feet walk through various landscapes (ice landscapes, forests, beaches, deserts, riversides…). As the background changes, the feet/legs walking change as well, like a catwalk where models follow, one after the other. In this case, however, we are not only seduced by beautiful, young, and skinny Caucasian women models. We are surprised by legs/feet that let us deduce bodies of various ages, ethnicities/races, body weights, and even genders, as men’s legs/feet also make their appearance in red high hill shoes. Details equally important to notice (as they explain the spectators’ excitement and rush to get closer the installation) are: a horizontal mirror, placed strategically on the floor and against the wall, in an angle that allows people to see the reflection of their feet, and a white bench, in front of that same mirror, which challenges spectators with three (red) words inscribed on its top: “TRY AND WALK”.

Responding to the challenge, (or just watching, amused, those who dare to take it), spectators approach the installation, look for the shoes of their size, sit on the bench, take their shoes off, and put on this new ones, (try to) stand on their feet and… then they feel it: how it feels (literally) to be on “her” shoes – on a woman’s shoes. Young and middle age men and women engage in this activity, and react differently. Most of men (either young or middle age), and some young women, experience the difficulty of standing and walking gracefully on the high hill shoes: they stumble or lean towards someone near them “asking for a hand” to keep their balance. They also experience the pain. “This is impossible!” I hear a man say. Others, shyer, just take off their high hills with an expression of suffering in their faces. There is a feeling of amusement and excitement in the air, and also of respect, as both those who wear the red high hill shoes and those who observe become aware that one needs to have, in fact, certain skills (including determination and resistance to pain) to walk on “her” shoes.

Then, Cheri Gaulke comes in, wearing white loose clothes and red Doc. Martin’s boots. She moves towards a gong, placed with its back to the window of the gallery. She brings a beater on her hand. She stops by the gong, and strikes it. One time. Two times. All her movements are solemn, as the movements of a group of twelve teenagers that enters the lobby, from the gallery, each of them carrying a white folding chair. They look like a small army: all wear white t-shirts and white pair of shorts (the boys’ are scorch shorts and the girls’ are mesh shorts); very ordered, they move at the sound of the gong.

The youths stand in line, with their backs to the installation, facing the audience. Following the sound of the gong, they unfold their chairs, sit, take of their shoes, place the shoes on their laps, showing them to us, get up, go to the shelves and take one pair of high hills, leaving their shoes in the shelf, go back to their sits, put the red high hills on, pose to us wearing those shoes – one, two, three times – some of them try to seduce us, others look despaired, others amused. Then the group walks, randomly, along the narrow corridor left between their chairs and the audience. They get back in the line. They leave the gallery, through the main door, turn left and keep walking until they are out of our sight. Hollywood Boulevard is now their catwalk. About ten to fifteen minutes later they are back, standing again in line, facing us. At the sound of the gong, they take of their high hill shoes and then offer them to the audience. The cycle that spectators started (even without knowing), about an half-hour before, was now completed.

While we were waiting for the group to come back, I manage to talk with Gaulke. After presenting myself as an UCLA student attending a class on Feminist Art, I ask her how does this work relates (or not) the kind of work she was doing in the 70’s. She tells me that, back then, as now, she thinks “high hills” (an object culturally assigned to women) “is a very odd costume”, about which there is a “blind spot” in our culture. Hence, she is interested in creating situations where the strangeness of that costume becomes evident, “especially to men!” These “men”, were not only those in the audience, but also those in the group. She said: “One of the boys in the group” after experiencing walking in high hills “told his girlfriend she didn’t have to wear high hills for him anymore.”

Although Cheri Gaulke is now a recognized female feminist artist who presents her work as a part of a major event in Los Angeles (Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980), in a gallery that provides her with the material and human resources she needs to develop her work, it seems that times have not changed enough. It is yet necessary to teach or remind men (and women) that costumes present in our culture (in particular those assigned to women) are not natural or given, but a creation or construction – and, often, a painful one for those who have to cope with it. It is not surprising, then, those aspects of the feminist art aesthetics and method that were being developed during the 1970’s (cfr. Wilding, 1994: 32-47 and Lippard, 1995: 42-61), when Cheri Gaulke was a graduate student and an emergent artist, learning in the Woman’s Building (cfr. Gaulke, 1998: 13-21), are present in Gaulke’s work, today: the use of everyday life objects (in this case, the shoes); to show the arbitrariness (because constructed, and “not natural”) of a costume that victimizes women by shaping their roles, acts, and appearance according to an ideology that they may not be aware of, or with which they do not agree; and to use art as a means of consciousness-raising, not only for the audience, but also (and most importantly) for the group – the experience of making art becomes also a political and learning experience.

References

Gaulke, Cheri. 1998. “‘Acting Like Women’. Performance Art of the Woman’s Building”. Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena. Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland (eds.). Gardiner, New York, Critical Press, pp. 13-21.

Lippard, Lucy. 1995. “The LA Woman’s Building”. The Pink Glass Swan. New York, New York Press, pp. 85-88.

Valente, Rita M. Rufino. 2011. [Notes on the performance Peep Totter Fly, by Cheri Gaulke. Los Angeles, LACE. Los Angeles Contemporary Art Exhibitions. September 27th 2011, 8PM-10PM].

Wilding, Faith. 1994. “The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts, 1970-1975”. The Power of Feminist Art. The American Movement of the 1979s. History and Impact. Norma Broude and Marry D. Garrard (eds.). New York, Abrams Publishers Inc., pp. 32-47.

I am in LA for four days now, and I haven’t written a line about it so far. Why? Well, it’s not for lack of experiences, for sure… The question is: where to start? When you are in such a wide and eclectic city like LA it is not possible to start “with the very beginning”, because there is no such thing. Today, however, (in fact, tonight!) I just found out what “is there” in LA, that is, where to start. In LA there is no “beginning”, nor “end”, just “middles”… and mingling. LA is Chicana!

This is not an obvious conclusion. When making this statment I am not thinking (just) on the large percentage of the population who is descended from Mexican parents. I define LA as Chicana, because I feel its identity consists of and, at the same time, is between an innumerable range of cultures: white North-American, Afro-American, Asian-American, European-American, Native-American, African, Asian, European, Mexican… and all the forms that are born from the mingling of this diversity. And, as you can imagine, LA’s identity is far from being in peace with it self. In fact, it is a battlefield, a map of tensions. I can feel it in the geography of the city: the different neighborhoods (or cities) so far away from each other, so difficult to reach, given the traffic. LA has poor subway service; if you don’t own a car, either you walk or take a bus. A bus ride lasts, in average, 45 to 60minutes. Traffic seems to be a contradictory effort: an attempt to reach and keep apart. I felt this tension today, as well, when I was walking on downtown, on the “historic district”, where two avenues, side by side, could not be most different: on Broadway you can find Mexican wedding-garments stores, eastern bric-à-brac stores, jewelry stores with armed private security guards at the door, loud (really loud music)… and almost no Caucasian on the street. Where were they? On the avenue above, in the financial district, heading or getting out their offices… Or in their mansions in Beverly Hills, or in they fancy houses out of the busyness of LA… Some of them (like myself), can even be found near UCLA! Should I go further with this?

I did not arrive to my definition of LA’s identity alone… It occurred to me tonight, when I was attending the premier/testing of Los Doppelgangers! the newest performance by Guillermo Gómez-Peña (La Pocha Nostra) and Richard Montoya (Culture Clash). In this show, which is an experiment for these artists, since this is the first time they work together, Guillermo and Richard experiment with crossing borders between theater and performance art, and between art and politics. They share with us their artistic fears: while Guillermo fears representing/acting, to rehearse for a long period of time and the obligation to memorize an inhumane number of pages of a script, Richard fears to be on stage with someone “smarter” and better actor than him. And, more significantly, they share with us their political concerns: the domination of North-American (white) culture and multinational-capitalist driven economic and political agenda. Although mentioning the international realm, their concern focuses on the effects of this agenda in North-American lands, in the Chicano and Mexican population.

Guillermo and Richard stand in opposite corners of the Fowler Museum courtyard, facing each other. With their solos, following one after the other, they create a debate a conversation, which is, at times extended to the audience, in particular with Guillermo’s “shamanistic” performances. Between Richard’s monologues and homage to Mexican and Chicano marxist activists, as well as to his father, Guillermo’s spoken-word performances (some of which are brilliantly updated versions of previous performances and texts) we are lead to the grand (“multi-trans-racial”) finale; the “kosher baptism” of a Chicano by the “Angel of Westwood”. This section of the performance was as much unexpected as hilarious, for the audience… and the performers! Richard surprised everyone (including himself) when he improvised the steps of baptism ceremony with a sense of presence, time and humor that I am not able to put into words, at least at this point. After all, the performance ended just a couple of hours ago! I should also mention that the show counted with the participation of an amazing chicano band, who performed between Guillermo and Richard’s individual performances and, at times, provided them with a live soundtrack, a veiled-face dominatrix, who would take pictures and create “dioramas” with those willing to engage, and a troupe of three frenetic bunnies who… well I still trying to figure out what was their “role” in the show… Where they a joke and a critique to the Playboy “bunny-girls”? Were they a sarcastic materialization of a racist analogy: Mexicans and Chicanos in the US, as a “plague”… Or maybe, as I already figure it happens so often in LA, they were just there “doing their thing”, being part of an eclectic-and-problematic (human) landscape…

This is my fifth day in Los Angeles. In the next days and weeks (I hope) I will share more thoughts about “how it feels” to be here; about how it feels to be “chicanized“… and “chicanize”, of course! (I just came up with two new words in a sentence, uau!) And I will do it in the right (Los Angeles?) way. That is: following a non-chronological, messy and hot-blooded order.

Soon: first (and second) impressions about LA!
Stay tunned!

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic

— Andy Warhol

Next Saturday I’ll fly from Portugal to Los Angeles. This week, I am saying goodbye to close friends and family. I recall the reactions of some of them, when I first told them about my new adventure. They would just open their eyes, full of wonder, and say something like: “wow, you’re going to Hollywood!?!”, “you’re going to live in Beverly Hills?”, “send my love to [celebrity name], if you see him!”… I realize that Hollywood is still the adults’ and teenagers’ dreamland. They think of it as a glamorous, luxurious site populated by talented, dazzling, and haute couture dressed stars.

It was a funny coincidence that, between the end of August and the beginning of September, I read two different and (apparently) non-related articles about Los Angeles and Hollywood. The first, “Los Angeles. Feira das vaidades” [Los Angeles. Vanity fair.], by Rui Henriques Coimbra (Coimbra, 2011) about the excesses of vanity and the relationship between self-promotion and business in the Hollywood cinema industry; the other, “The writing on the hill”, by David Thomson (Thomson, 2011), about the decrease of popularity and sales of this same business. Although each author did not know about the other’s article, I can find a very interesting relation between the two.

Coimbra tell us about how Hollywood starts spend $9.000 (or more) in short Chanel jackets, which sell out as soon as they are made available in stores, or approximately two million dollars in a wedding. He also tells us about how starts often play important roles in politics and how careful they are when going out in the street to do something so unimportant to the world as walking their dogs. Coimbra shows us evidences of something more than a shallow promotion of the self. These celebrities are, in fact, what I would call “entrepreneurs of the self”. They make their lives by performing themselves, and every move, every word, and every purchase is, most of the times, a carefully taken step in a well design strategy of entrepreneurship. So, why to spend two million dollars on a wedding (as Kim Kardashian and Chris Humphries did)? Coimbra puts it on (their) perspective:

if the ceremony is going to be filmed, for sure, if it will be, possibly, part of a weekend when audience rates are being evaluated; and if, with all this Kim is able, by this means, to buy a Dior’s dress [that is, make enough money to be able to buy one], the question is: why not? It is all the same person (42-43).

And why to perform walking the dog instead of just walking her?

… a person that works in the front line of image industry, will never leave home without thinking his or her photo will appear published in the cover of a magazine and in the general gossip, which are real cancers in a career path where only a few get to make it. No. Jennifer Jason Leight does not simply walk her dog. She will walk down Hollywood Hills, but she is extremely aware of what she’s doing. At any moment, something which one cannot exactly predict will happen; but at any moment, it will happen, for sure. I repeat; it is not vanity, is cautiousness (45).

While Rui Henriques Coimbra tells us how the business of self is increasing in Hollywood, David Thomson tells us how the movie business is not doing so well:

In the first decade of this century, America’s annual domestic box office pushed over $10 billion ($10.89 billion for 2010). Bit $10 billion, you realise now, is not so great. And in the small print you find that in 2010 1.37 billion tickets were sold, whereas in 2002 it was 1.58 billion – so, in eight years, 13% of the audience has melted away (98-99).

In the same way, the Oscar’s ceremony is becoming decreasingly popular. According to Thomson, in 2010

the American Tv audiences [of the Oscar’s ceremony] fell again, from 41.7m to 37.6m, with a 12% slump in the 18-49 age bracket. In 1998, the year of “Titanic”, it was 57m, so more than a third of the viewers have drifted away (99).

Why is this so? Thomson provides us with some answers, some of them easy to imagine: only a few people prefer going to the movies than watching a film in their coach, at home. Audiences prefer to have their films on DVD, or, which is becoming increasingly more common, download it from Internet. And the younger population, Thomson recalls, is not even watching movies on TV, but in much smaller devices, with a different kind of attitude. “They’re watching on screens they can hardly see”, Thomson says. “So they keep them on the way they keep the light on. They’re not quite looking any more, and the consequence is that movie narrative is slipping away” (100). In addition, as Thomson argues, it seems that there are not great film directors. Star directors as Coppola, George Lucas or Martin Scorsese choose other direction for their work. Only Steven Spielberg, Thomson says, is being able to “convince us he’s both [a film director and an artist]” (98). Today, according to Thomson film directors are “new kids who do what money demands”, in other words, animated films and movies filled up with special effects. After analyzing briefly the two films which he considers to be the best of 2010 – Toystory 3 and Inception – Thomson concludes that, in short, the key of mainstream/blockbuster movies nowadays is “make movies that have little to do with the photography of life, faces, real places, and ordinary action as you can manage” (98).

Here is where things get interesting to me. If we cross the two articles, we understand that each of them reports a move which is the opposite of the other: while films move from ordinary life to fantasy (that is animation and dazzling special effects), so survive, the celebrities of Hollywood want to make fantasy their ordinary life (special effects being, in this case, make-up, amazing garments and jewelry, top-line boats and cars, and scripts being their neuroses, their love affairs and family tragedies). But these moves are contradictory only in appearance; these are two layers moving in opposite ways, not against each other, but to meet… not in the same point, put in the same surface. They meet on a the flatness of a world that still want us to believe in fairytales, but whose decay it cannot hide anymore. A flatness that does not conceals, but reflects. It is the product of, as Fredric Jameson told us once (cfr. Jameson, 1991), a “new kind of superficiality”, that of the postmodern culture, marked by the merge of production of culture and commodification, culture and politics.

References
Coimbra, Rui Henriques. 2011. “Los Angeles. Feira das vaidades”, Revista Única, Expresso, #2026, 27th August, pp. 42-46. [Translations presented are my responsibility]

Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism or, the cultural logic of late capitalism, Durham, Duke University Press.

Thomson, David. 2011. “The writing on the hill”, Intelligent life, Issue 4/4, Summer, pp. 96-101.