Once More With Feeling
This piece is a contemporary reinterpretation of Judy Chicago’s Cock and Cunt Play (1971), a comedic skit about gender stereotypes and domestic violence. It was first performed at Womanhouse (1972) by Faith Wilding and Janice Lester who wore black leotards … Continue reading Cock and Cunt Play Today
Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen’s Never Mind Pollock appropriates performances by numerous artists including Orlan, Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann, Janine Antoni and Helena Almeida. All of the original performances are connected in their expressive use of paint and their implicit … Continue reading Never Mind Pollock – Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen
Tableaux Vivants is a constellation of imagery, poses and language taken from the history of performance art. Beginning with an imitation of Vanessa Beecroft’s VB16 (1996), one of the models reaches down and pulls a scroll from her vagina, evoking … Continue reading Tableaux Vivants
Caroline Smith’s homage to Bobby Baker’s Drawing on a Mother’s Experience (1988) involved the divulging of other people’s eating secrets, spilling and smudging the ingredients of their anecdotes onto a canvas on the floor. The piece developed out of private … Continue reading Drawing on Experience – Caroline Smith
Katherine Araniello’s re-make of Martha Rosler’s Vital Statistics (1977) involved the meticulous measuring of a blow-up doll and the reciting of various invented statistics about disability. The original Vital Statistics is a diatribe against the scientific standardisation of physique and … Continue reading Vital Statistics New & Improved – Katherine Araniello
The Ties That Bind highlights the recurrent use of binding throughout the history of performance art as a metaphor for both women’s entrapment in society (within certain roles) and conversely, in a more positive light, women’s connectedness to others, their … Continue reading The Ties That Bind
For Hairoism Oreet Ashery shaved her head and applied hair donated from the audience to her scalp and face to imitate the hair patterns of four male public figures: Moshe Dayan, Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, Avigdor Lieberman and Yassar Arafat/Ringo … Continue reading Hairoism – Oreet Ashery
Lucy Thane created a number of faithful re-creations of sculptor Betsy Damon’s performance 7000 Year Old Woman (1977). Damon wanted to transform public spaces by disrupting the expected role of women within them and to try to imagine an alternative … Continue reading 7000 Year Old Woman – Lucy Thane
Over a cup of tea outside the Tate Modern, members of the public discussed their answers to the question ‘what does feminism mean to you today?’ Visitors were invited to record their thoughts on blank rosettes, each one a political … Continue reading Tea For Thought – Davina Drummond & Nadine Jarvis
PerformFeminism.com was an interactive website that tracked the history of feminist performance art with a timeline linked to descriptions of live acts alongside video and photographic documentation and links to further information. The works on the site encompassed myriad approaches including … Continue reading PerformFeminism.com
As the result of my having received the ‘Art in the Archive: Living with Make Bursary’ from The Women’s Art Library/Make and Feminist Review, I organised an evening of rediscovery and new feminist performance art entitled Once More With Feeling. The event took … Continue reading Once More With Feeling – Introductory Video
The Moon: Women Watch Themselves Being Looked At is a free feminist ‘newspaper’ ironically named in response to the best-selling tabloid in the UK, whilst also referencing the feminist fascination with the moon as symbolic of feminine energy. The Moon features … Continue reading The Moon