Curios

Watched this documentary on Hulu yesterday. The subject is Marian Anderson, the lead singer of InSaints, who became notorious in 1993 for incorporating her dominatrix work into her live performances. I found this especially interesting in contrast to Karen Finley, who was censored for using her body to communicate the plight of powerless women. Marian Anderson lived both sides of that and I found myself conflicted by feeling inspired and overwhelmed by her tragedy.

Obsessively googling her after watching this documentary, I found Sadobabies, a 30 minute documentary short by a folklorist named Nancy Kalow. It features a group of San Francisco street kids in the mid-80s who live in an abandoned high school. Marian Anderson is one of those kids and you can watch here.

Sidenote: very excited about discovering folkstreams.net

And there is a follow up to Sadobabies called Losers Club that catches up with some of the kids five years later. Watch it here.

So all weekend I’ve been thinking about these kids who don’t have anywhere to go and still find it in themselves pursue their dreams and express themselves and I want to do something.

Inspiring, interesting and great to see this well documented event from the inside.

Between this, The Woodmans and Touching the Void I have seen some awesome movies lately.

Seeing this reminded me of something I had completely forgotten.

In 5th grade we took a field trip to an art museum and on the bus I held hands with Pat Gee who finally couldn’t take it anymore and said it made his hands feel like he’d been playing Tetris for hours. So I found myself alone (not sure if I was physically alone or just in a solitary state of mind) browsing the collection and ended up entranced by these nude, body paint photographs by Keith Haring.

As we were leaving I filled out a comment card and under suggestions wrote “More naked people”.

(Source: yeshairy)

A friend drunkenly handed Karen Finley’s memoir to me at a party last weekend telling me I’d be really into it. So I read it as fast as I could to get it back before he realized he loaned it out. 

It’s about half memoir half text from her performance pieces. She’s an engaging writer (I tore through 350 pages in 4 days) but give me a break with some of this stuff. And by that I mean thank you for paving the way. I’ve never been more over being a woman than I was while reading that book. The stuff of hers I really liked came during and after her legal problems. I thought she really stuck it to that old pervert Jesse Helms by not backing down and using him like he used her. I love that.

Maybe reading about performance art is pointless. All intent and no entertainment.