"Fresno Sleezo" was first performed by Vicki Hall and Steven Baim in 1970 at the CSU Fresno campus gallery. This performance piece was viewed by Judy Chicago's Feminist Art Program. Vicki Hall, a feminist performance artist, became Judy Chicago's teaching assistant in the last year of her MFA program at UCLA. Upon her frustration and anger with being the only female in the MFA program, she decided to chain herself to the floor in the exhibition space as a protest piece at UCLA during the fall of 1970. "Student in Chains" was a piece that was only performed once just like Fresno Sleezo. This reenactment of "Fresno Sleezo" is a performance that is slightly different than the first performance. The performance was done in silence which I thought was very interesting. When I first walked in it was already very silent and I felt that the performance had already started with the hostess giving us a ticket with only using her body gestures. The students and myself were let in one by one to take a seat.
At the start of the show, Carnie (John) came in with his wagon and dropped all the random objects on the floor. The show girl came in and is looking at all the objects on the floor curiously. She sees a roll of fabric and starts to cut it, and she puts it on the wall. She then starts to set dart, dart guns, a toy gun, and a almost empty water bottle on a retractable desk. She uses all the objects together using a drill to drill a tray and pieces of wood together. Carnie comes in and looks at all the objects set around the room curiously. He starts doing the same things the show girl was doing. He then sits in the chair nect to the desk and drinks the water from the water bottle . The girl comes in a different outfit and he starts to attach her arms to the wall with chains. He puts the tray with the cord around her neck. Man sits in front of her and shoots darts at her to the tray. After he left, she seemed happy, and she cleaned all the darts up and put them back. Carnie comes back with his wagon and puts everything back, then walks out.
Everything was done in silence, but the actions and the setting did all of the work. Organization and process art was added so it made me curious to know why they did what they did. I loved how they also mentioned that there was some improv done during the times that some things didn't work out, but in the aftermath of it, it worked out. I enjoyed the perfromance because it was so different than what I usually view when I view artworks.
Hello Neelab,
ReplyDeleteI really have loved reading through all your blog posts! They're all so well-written and encapsulate the events so well! I also enjoyed the aspects of improvisation during the show! I mentioned that in my post as well when I stated the question about unexpected improv during the Q & A. I think it is interesting how there can be improv, but where we as the audience have no clue what was planned versus unplanned.