Issue #05
Fall/Winter 1992
Environments

We began to solicit articles for this issue of the Performance Journal in the wake of the Los Angeles riots and the hype surrounding the Earth Summit in Brazil. The juxtaposition of these events underscored what we have known for a long time—that our global ecology and urban environments are collapsing and that our government refuses to do anything but worsen both crises. Los Angeles in flames represented the betrayal of cities across the U.S.; the politics of hypocrisy on display in Rio ensured a continued course of environmental devastation for the sake of corporate interests. Performance Journal #5 is created by artists who are compelled by the ways in which contemporary environmental issues affect their lives, communities, and art. Because we believe that artists are able to both powerfully critique and put forth healing visions, the Journal unites the perspectives of the dancers, choreographers, performance artists, writers, visual artists, and musicians who make up our communities.
Taking environment and its impact on art, culture, and community as a common point of departure, contributors to this issue have framed their concerns broadly and diversely. Patricia Hoffbauer, Marina Zurkow, Charles Uwiragiye, and Livia Daza-Paris all traveled to Rio in June for the First Worldwide Conference of Indigenous People and the Earth Summit. While their reports diverge with their experiences, each offers a strikingly sociocultural take on environmental issues that proves representative of the Journal as a whole. Again and again, an insistence upon the continuity and interconnection between ecological and social realms emerges as a common theme and commitment (see, among others, Jacki Apple, Rachel Rosenthal). For example, the intersections between environment and oppression are manifestly clear-cut in both the widespread "first world" practice of dumping toxic waste on developing countries (see Shu Lea Cheang and Jessica Hagedorn) and, in this society, the space of violence that surrounds women and their bodies (see Laurie Weeks). Relatedly, the insidious way in which power, authority, and violence are themselves naturalized feeds the repressive machinery of social determination and control (see Mark Sussman and Jenny Romaine, the Desert Storm trading cards).
[Excerpt from Letter from the Editors]
Editorial team
Editor-In-Chief
Cathy Edwards - Kate Ramsey
Design
Esther Kaplan - John Walker/Dinglasan
Contributing Editor
Patricia Hoffbauer - Guy Yarden - Esther Kaplan
Advertising
Christopher Caines
Copy Editor
Christopher Caines
Articles
Letter from the Editors
We began to solicit articles for this issue of the Performance Journal in the wake of the Los Angeles riots and the hype surrounding the Earth Summit in Brazil. The...
The Environment and My Work—A Few Quick Notes
Right now we're living in an environment that’s hostile to the arts. It's easy to feel undervalued when support is being cut and opportunities are diminishing on most fronts. One...
Observations on Wave Hill (July 1992)
Having become a mother recently, I'm home more. I clean up more, and I'm suddenly aware of the immense amount of trash a family of three can produce—daily. And I...
Carta con Son
I have wanted to dance many things tonight. A part of my life. A merengue. Razones . I go to the rehearsal space. I feel good, moving around. Much music...
Far from the Front
North on 91, up near the Canadian border, the cars thin out. Around 6 pm I'm likely to be the only car around. Then, on the country road a guy...
Of Samba and Storytelling: Cultural Politics at the Earth Summit
It's always hard going home. I have never given much thought to the complications and logical consequences of the act of leaving home, and so I have never really understood...
Pauline Oliveros and Ione: A Dialogue
Njinga the Queen King, a Play with Music and Pageantry is scheduled to open as a part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November...
Kiss Kiss Kill Kill: Excerpts from a Film
EXT. - KAWAIWAI ISLAND - PREDAWN A fishing spear gleams in the darkness; the spear disappears into the black water, striking its elusive prey. The ocean surrounding the remote Pacific...
Earth Day
daily, once we arrive we should ask ourselves what are we doing to make the earth glad that we are here walking its face breathing and being does our living...
Interview: Charles Uwiragiye
The following is a transcription of a videotaped interview with Charles Uwiragiye, a member of the Batwa people living in Rwanda. He attended the First Worldwide Conference of Indigenous People...
The Origins of Intercultural Performance in the West
Performance Art in the West did not begin with Dadaist "events." Since the early days of the Conquest, "aboriginal samples" of people from Africa, Asia, and t h e Americas...
Dislocated Identities: Reflections of an Arab Jew
When issues of racial and colonial discourse are discussed in the U.S., people of Middle Eastern and North African origin are often excluded. This piece is written with the intent...
Interview: George Bartenieff On the Ecofest
The “Eco-Festival “happened from April 23 to May 3 1992 at Theater for the New City in New York's East Village. I interviewed George Bartenieff, TNC's co-director. in order to...
Pangaean Dreams: a shamanic journey
In this performance, I was showing how the geological history of Earth was parallel to personal experience and historical events. For me, the refugee experience. For the United States, the...
In Praise of Cities
I live in the middle of a beating heart . It pulses with a constant and inexorable rhythm, and glows with a complex vitality that is fed by the mixture...
Prowess in the Wilderness
Pat Hall Smith, Bernadine Jennings , Thea Martinez, and Roberta Stokes, where? You mean all together? Who could gather all these foremothers and sisters together in one place around one...
The Culture of Disappearance
The unfortunate fact is that this planet is in a state of severe environmental crisis. The balance of life is so precarious that it may easily be tipped over. It...
Guide Us to Discarded Heights
PROVINCETOWN. Unlike the rest of Cape Cod, which was formed by glaciers 10,000 years ago, Provincetown was created by wind and water. The entire town is a sand dune. A...
Agoraphobia
A little girl's pussy is so mild. When you're six years old it’s just a thing you have, a dolphin's friendly smile. Is it connected to things that scare you,...
Public Secret: Excerpts from a Performance
The parallel rigidity of the upright trees and their density and number fill his heart with a deep and mysterious delight. To this day, he loves to go deep into...
On Susan Sgorbati
Susan Sgorbati is a site dance artist —the first site dance artist that I ever knew. Interviews with her and several of her former students from Bennington College offer a...
Anatomy of a Dance
Susan Sgorbati created a dance for the Sara Delano Roosevelt Park in the Bowery in New York City in the spring of 1987. Jack Moore, then also teaching dance at...
Notes
La Promenade (1992) explores the concepts of environment, structure, self, and other. With a group of three we bridged the public and private spatial characteristics of the rooftop environment—brick facades,...
Sitelines: a ground for theater
[As I use the word theater it embraces plays, performance, dance, opera — any live act in which actor is seen to assume (to any degree) a persona; it has...