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. FUSE ms^mm--- \ Volume 24 Number 1 39