September 20, 2007

1.  The stage performance was done at the Cannery in Dayton Ohio on September 15. It was a good experience. I liked the fact that I had the opportunity to include a "stage" performance with the Retro Punk X piece. This allowed the piece to have Internet Performance Art, Environmental Theater, and "normal" stage Performance Art.  It also gave us the opportunity to add more sound (music) to the performance. My performance art partner was Amanda Hatton that has the ability to write, play and sing music.

2.  I always had historically related Performance Art to Vaudeville and Burlesque. Last night I decided to read more about the history of both of them.  The Performance Art Festivals are very similar to both of them. Probably Vaudeville more so than Burlesque but there was a major difference and it was that Vaudeville was heavily censored. This limited it to the cultural norms of the time and because the performers were getting paid and making a living by performing they had to accept the censorship.  Burlesque performers also got paid but had an audience that wanted more. No matter how you look at it, and why the critics say they both died, you have to accept the fact that they got paid. This is why they may have been entertaining but they were not art. This is a major reason that Performance art is ART because material gain is not a consideration.  An interesting note in my historical research of last night was that I actually saw one of the last historical Burlesque acts. This is from http://www.musicals101.com/burlesque2.htm  I saw this act in Baltimore around 43 years ago.

"....Blaze Starr played her strip for laughs. After one of her breasts "accidentally" bounced out of her costume –

Blaze tripped to the microphone. Looking down at her exposed breast, she said, "What are you doing out there, you gorgeous thing?" Then she covered herself. "You got to tell them they're pretty," she said; "it makes them grow" . . . Then she flung herself on the couch and quickly stripped down to a transparent bra and black garter pants. She produced a power puff and asked rhetorically, "Who's going to powder my butt?"

3 October 2007

1.  After a performance in a previously unknown venue I try to record the afterthoughts. These are for the SIDESHOW II at the cannery in Dayton Ohio on 15 September 2007.

A.  The stage was a walk on stage without a dressing room or side entrance. There was a curtain hung from the middle that was probably there for another purpose but I used it as an entrance (your feet could still be seen through a ten inch gap at the bottom). The stage was large with a lot of electronic audio equipment already on it. There was a mic. The audience of about 30 all stood but were below the stage.

B.  Tracy and Louie called just before the performance and said they could not get a baby setter. So I adapted without them.  I had only wrote the parts in for Tracy and Louie because they had been important performers in my previous performances. It was easy to do it without them. With them in I had, had to make it more complex than necessary anyway.

C.  I had given other people the chance to perform by asking them to pass out things to the audience as they were dressed in religious characters. None did. I did consider it my obligation to allow as many people to perform as I could if they had helped me in the past.

D.  As far as the actual performances go they all went as I had expected.

30 October 2007

1.  I participated in 24 hour comic day. This is a day where you create a 24 page comic in 24 hours. I did finish the comic but it ended up with 15 pages. I used it as an opportunity to enhance the performance art piece. It is titled "Rise and Fall of the Super-Organism".  I posted it and linked it from the "Super-Organism" chapter.

2.  It has been almost a year since I started Retro Punk X.  I have only two short videos left before I can call it a completed project. However, I will have tweaking to do. Some things, I have not done that were good ideas, I may still do. Among them is the "This was not my life" video poem and the Hegel references. I may do them after the completion.

3.  I have a greater appreciation for our position in Evolution after doing the performance and ironically even have a greater (but still not very great) appreciation for Civilization. It seems that I am more content with both since I have spent a year studying and performing them.

4.  I did create two more (point) definitions while doing the performances and they were "Environmental Theater" and "Internet Performance Art".  Both were created out of necessity, the same as the "Ten points of Performance Art".

5.  Even though the performance is out of "Industrial Culture" it has a more eternal link. In this manner is puts "Industrial Culture" as just a wilted flower in a field of flowers called man.

8 December 2007

1.  The major work that I have done in the last month is the Dayton Ohio at the turn of the Millennium in comparison to Pre-Nazi Berlin. As I worked on the Retro Punk X performance I saw such a relationship between these two.

2.  I also put a page up for how an EM meter works. With illustrations.

3.  I have let other ideas go that I wanted to include because working on this performance has worn me out. It has been more than a year and that is enough. I may get back to the parts that I wanted to but didn't get done.