Live at the End of the Century
Aspects of Performance Art in Vancouver
edited by Brice Canyon, Visible Arts Society, Vancouver, 2000.

R e v i e w by J o h a n n a

Householder

"Times'er tough in those days, little
Lulu, you kin hardly imagine...."
"Tell me about it, Gram, tell me
about the olden days."
"Wal, when I furs began teachin'
performance art there was only
one book."
"One book! for all of those artists!"
"That's right missy, and now there's
hunnerds. Course mos' of em still
don't mention Canadians...."
That one book was Performance by Artists
edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale,
published in 1979. It was followed shortly
after

by

the

proceedings

of

the

Multidisciplinary Aspects of Performance:

ASPECTS OF PERFORMANCE ART IN VANCOUVER

Postmodernism conference — Performances
Text(e)s & Documents, published in 1981
and edited by Chantal Pontbriand. Then a
long intake of breath, and in 1991 the encyclopedic

Performance

auAn

Canada

1970-1990 edited by Alain Martin-Richard
and Clive Robertson. That's three books

traditional academic writing and academic

attempting a comprehensive account of four

structures."2 Just so. Perhaps that explains

local over the global. However, this book

decades of performance art in Canada.1 Of

the absence of literature. In fact, this state-

transcends itself through a rich array of

course there are countless articles, cata-

ment could well be the jacket blurb of the

approaches —thirteen articles, each one

logues, monographs and the like, but so

book in which we find it quoted. So perfor-

offering important insights into a complex

very few collections that this one, Live at the

mance has only itself to blame for its

field. It turns away from "traditional acad-

End of the Century: Aspects of Performance

absence, and I for one am relieved to have

emic writing" and indulges to the hilt in

Art in Vancouver, slakes a big thirst.

it so. For instead of thick theory, we get the

writing by performance artists, about the

artists' eye view and the very readable

art they think about all the time —dare I

handbook of a community.

say it —passionately.

In her contribution to Live at the End of the

personal over the authoritative account, the

Century, Judy Radul cites Marvin Carlson,
to wit, "Performance by its nature resists

Unlike another recent compendium, the

Live at the End is significant not because it

conclusion, just as it resists the sort of defi-

massive Out of Actions,2 Live at the End is

is encyclopedic but because it is focused.

nitions, boundaries and limits so useful to

modest in its aspirations, preferring the

Certainly the Vancouver scene has many

58

Review

BOOK

aspects distinguishing it from other centres

But something is to be found here, too. In

singularity encompassing heterogeneity...

— the continuity of the Western Front as a

this case it is the insistence that perfor-

as I try to account for Marcel's muddy foot-

performance

unflagging

mance art is a fabulous hybrid, suffocated

print on the floor of my grandmother's

involvement of specific artists, and the

by the "Euro-American Neo-Fluxus" (so

house within a cultural silence found only

plethora of persons willing to underscore

dubbed by Margaret Dragu) canonical

on a certain Indian Reservation — where

the performative nature of everyday life by

garb. In "Beyond Haute Camp: the inter-

the silence is a living space, the direct

naming themselves as characters in a

play

descendent of life before the Reservation."

berserk roman a clef —to name a few. But

Vancouver," Glenn Alteen makes a vivid

presenter,

the

of

drag

and

performance

in

the specificity of certain trajectories played

chronicle of the hybridization of the art,

In between, Judy Radul takes on perfor-

out in Vancouver ripple outward.

gay art, gay and performance "communi-

mance art's arch-nemesis— theatre. Step-

ties." In "Performance Art & The Native

ping off from Fried's 1967 essay "Art and

Editor Brice Canyon has gathered topo-

Artist: an

Aiyyana

Objecthood" (it was after all his invocation

graphical and chronological approaches to

Maracle describes in loving detail the

of the demon theatricality that cast its pall

the subject, "aspects of," as the subtitle

pivotal moments of silence broken by

over literal art damning the fluids and

says; so we really have two books in this

aboriginal performers. Karen Henry recalls

juices of live art with guilt by association)

one. The first is an excellent collection of

that golden time when artists were playing

Radul

essays, scripts,

in the airwaves with expanded performa-

theatricality. Meanwhile Paul Wong cuts to

ruminations,

scholarly

Evolutionary

Mix?"

mulls over

the ascendance of

on

tive investigations into slow scan video, live

the chase with "Various Definitions of

performance art. The second is a compre-

closed circuit performances, radio and

Performance Art, Oct. 13, 1999."

hensive chronology that runs as a sidebar

cable TV.

accounts

and

personal

reflections

on every page giving an astonishing thirty-

Bracketing these candy box contents are

five-year record of events interspersed with

The crux of the matter is the assertion

highly performative texts by les emmi-

thumbnail-sized images of performances

made by Alteen and others throughout the

nences grises, Glenn Lewis and Tanya

from 1965 to 1999.

book that performance art has many

Mars. In "Mondo Artie," Lewis takes off on

mothers (some of them men in drag) and

a

its treasures are essays on

that the insistance that it is a child only (or

Vancouver art history. This hip shooting

Amongst

mad

detective

skulk

through

lived

aboriginal performance by Warren Arcan,

even primarily) of visual art limits our

script starring Sleuth Lips and a cast of

Aiyyana Maracle, and Archer Pechawis.

understanding. An attenuated European

VIPs and VIPlaces works a "You are There"

Soaring descriptions of significant perfor-

lineage that includes poetry sonore but

magic on all of us who weren't. Gathie

mances accompany deeply-felt analysis.

excludes tap dancing is not the experience

Falk, Mr. Peanut, Lady and Dr. Brute,

described here. The Vancouver

Marcel Idea, Anna Banana and many more

scene

In a poetic text about the dangers of writing

was/is remarkable in its cross-dressing,

of the

true stories, Ivan Coyote centres the collec-

cross-pollinating plethorality.

observed Ed Sullivan-esque appearances.

late and great

make

sharply

Ms Mars closes out the collection with an

tion, reminding us of the repercussions of
telling. Coyote begins in the tactile world of

And Warran Arcan speaks to the hybridity

handwriting, "My grandmother's letters look

of embodiment, "Given: the impression

ironic send-up of her own life's work.

like someone has run an iron over them,"

Duchamp left on me... an impression where

I don't think that stuff of this quality comes

and leads us to the writers dilemma—history

he and I ("he and I" being provisional

easily, and it is some of the best writing

or fiction, "Something is always changed, or

concepts, for the sake of this article) are

about performance art I've read. Let's pray

lost altogether, in the translation."

never the same afterwards: a hybrid, a

we don't wait another decade for the next
installment. And for a trip to Vancouver, it
beats the red-eye.
Johanna Householder is on the steering committee for the 7a*lid International Festival of
Performance Art held biannually in Toronto.
Notes
1

I am talking about English publications — there are numerous publications coming out of Quebec especially from
Inter/Le Lieu. In his introduction to Live at the End, Brice
Canyon makes a similar point.

2

Carlson, Marvin A., Performance, a critical introduction.
London: Routledge, 1996.

3

Schimmel, Paul, editor. Out of Actions: between performance
and the object, 1949-1979, New York and London: Thames
and Hudson, 1998.

Billy Gene Wallace frolicking in Kempton Dexter's Digby County Pastures, June1986. Billy was a Vancouver drag artist
who was a founding member of the grunt gallery. Billy also did drag performance art works, mostly at the Lux at Western
Front during the 1986 Strategies for Survival Conference Cabaret, and later for the Broken Moose exhibition opening at
Unit Pitt Gallery. Billy Gene died in 1989, one of the Vancouver art community's first casualties to the AIDS crisis.

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