Judy & Ken,
I do jest, but not in this instance. In fact, I've been reading an extended online discussion
on laughter as The desired response to readings within the very broadly-defined so-called
New York School. Marcel Duchamp and John Cage elicited laughter from me when I
experienced their talk, and David Antin certainly extrapolates from their examples.
Distinguishing between stand-up and performance art is for me a very particular
judgment, but often it's the overt "frame" within which the act occurs. In addition, I
delight in encountering what I term "naive performance art" in "real life", but stand-up is
rarely naive. Sarah Silverman has amused me when I've witnessed her schtick on late-
night talk shows, and I await what she'll do with the break-up of her marriage to Jimmy
Kimmel. I predict it will be more stand-up than performance art, though she might put a
larger frame over it--perhaps a book.
Barry Alpert
On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:54:29 -0400, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Of course the original statement plus attacks on non-Japanese Haiku are
>the acts of an agent provocateur looking for a fight. Maybe they are
>themselves a form of performance art. That said, Barry's comments are
>provocative because of the weird line here that I gather David Antin
>also walks or walked: when are you performing and when are you doing
>stand-up Something?
>
>I had the experience--for it was that--yesterday of viewing (finally) an
>extremely odd documentary film called The Aristocrats. Few people will
>admit to knowing the film or the joke itself. In one version or another
>it probably is the dirtiest story ever told. For myself, an old friend
>of mine told me ONE version of The Aristocrats back in 1962. It was
>tame compared to the joke as it's evolved over the years. Nevertheless,
>I'm not sure how I got home. Stand-up *and* performance art...both, I
>suppose. The dancer and the dance? I can't tell a joke to save myself
>but yesterday I heard/saw the joke told AS a joke and then, via other
>performers, as performance art. I was particularly entranced by Sarah
>Silverman, an exquisitely beautiful young lady with a potty mouth that
>beggars description unless you quote her, which I will not. She was
>reclining on a couch or loveseat like a Goya Maja--the posture was
>certainly not like Gilbert Gottfried's classic schtick-worthy foul but
>riotous delivery at the Friar's Club. Silverman was playing instead of
>just telling a dirty joke. She said the joke was about her and her
>family. "We ARE The Aristocrats." It ended with her whispering of an
>encounter with an old-time radio broadcaster, Joe Franklin, concluding
>with "And then he raped me." She went about as far from the original
>story as you could go--the one requirement for the story is to end with
>the words "The Aristocrats!" Instead her ending was both absurd and
>truly grotesque.
>
>So you tell me: when to schtick turn into performance art or shall the
>twain never meet?
>
>Judy Prince wrote:
>> Agreed, completely.
>> Stand-up, Barry? Surely you jest.
>>
>> Judy
>>
While not filled with optimism, I still feel "Poetry" is in much better shape than before the
internet. Even then, it was in better shape than before rock & roll, with the terms "poet"
and "poetry" being attached to figures (Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan) whose audience
numbers in the millions. Just yesterday I was considering how a google search on my
name and a rocking grid backing my oral rendition of texts could amplify the audience for
a reading I'm scheduled to give in an area of this country where I wouldn't claim to be
"known". More "hooks" available than ever before--why not use them. Which reminds
me of the border between stand-up comedy and performance art, along which I've been
known to walk.
Barry Alpert
On Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:02:09 +0100, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Some people these days say that poetry is dead, some violently deny
>it. My current image of the art is that of Desdemona while being, and
>after, suffocated by Othello: murdered but still talking in its last
>gasps, raising up from its pillow on a final breath. The
>Wilhelm-Baynes translation of the I Ching has a line somewhere :
>'persistently ill, but still does not die' , which takes one beyond
>poor Desdemona, as of course her last revival is, well, curtains for
>her if not quite then the play.
|