October 25, 2005
Journey to the Center of INVISIBLE NYC
by Justin Quinn Pelegano
Wait, I think I dreamt this once. Or, why do my flashbacks always have to be in neon? And I’m surrounded by the pop-tart-culture of my youth when it was okay to wear bright thick shoelaces in your Reeboks. Then again maybe that was never okay. Maybe that was just me. But here it is once more. Bold totem homage to Spielberg’s E.T.; to those eerie Smurfs; to a purple goddess standing huge, multi-colored hair ready to rope me into her canvas, My Little Pony hovering over her shoulder like an equine demon tempting our lady into naughtiness. Lego men sculptures on guard for a world of exploded Skittles. And, of course, Flipper. My favorite dolphin in various stages of vomitous, garish bubble gum something spewing from his beak. And yet I can’t help fixating on the NY Giants football helmet looking like peanut scrapings from the floor at Rodeo Bar. Do not miss this.
“I wish you could meet Joshua. He’s so unassuming and shy,” Jesse tells me.
I quietly thank the universe for blessing Josh with talent. I don’t think I want to know the other “less exhibitable” releases for long-repressed fixation with mass-market icons. This will do just fine. Surely there’s commentary behind the paint, but I can’t bring myself to look there. The surface is way too much fun to ignore. If you can’t take your eyes off it, does that make it somehow brilliant? Whatever. Bold is beautiful. I privately thank the Dennings there's a place for it..
Showing until November 19th, mixed-media artist Joshua Abram Howard’s solo exhibit Novelties is busy shouting loud down on Orchard Street at the best-kept-secret gallery in the city: Invisible NYC. Okay, so it’s not like you need a password or anything to get in, but I can’t remember the last time I walked into a legit art gallery without getting stared down by the staff like I was some dirty loiterer. So getting to know Invisible does definitely feel like one of those whispers around town – the kind you desperately want to share. With a first floor East Village locale that immediately sets it apart from its Soho and Chelsea counterparts, Invisible is staking a welcome claim to the New York art scene. Only in its eight month of existence, it already fits like an integral part of the neighborhood. It’s young. It’s hip. And thanks to curator Jesse Lee Denning, it’s refreshingly snob-free.
“A lot of galleries give you attitude if you’re not looking to buy. Why have a gallery if you don’t want people to see the art? Success to us is about getting the artists, and their work, exposed.”
And judging by Josh’s month-long installation, that work is an intense type of original. Thanks to a unique subsidy, Invisible – which is booked solid with exhibits through mid-2007 – has armed itself with the freedom to showcase all that is risky and exhilarating about urban art. There’s only one criterion to meet in the gallery space: Jesse and her co-owner/husband Troy have to dig what you’re offering. Simple as that.
Same goes for the tattoo artists.
Meet Invisible NYC’s backside. Hidden behind the current offering of psychedelic art, you’ll find one of the most impressive appointment-only tattoo studios around. And while the gallery does financially fine, it’s the tattooing that affords this husband-and-wife duo the opportunity to run both shows on their own terms.
With Troy Denning at the helm of the ink crew – a team of tattoo artists he hand-picked and says he’s constantly learning from – the tats created at the back of the space match stride for stride the exhibits up front for their cutting edge quality. There’s no flash-art. No piercing. Just high caliber ink. And though Troy is straight up serious about his craft, the atmosphere in the private walled-off tat studio mirrors that of the street-side gallery: mellow. Mellow, yet laser-focused and edgy. By letting their art walk the walk, the Dennings have made that paradoxical triumvirate possible. Invisible’s location doesn’t hurt either. For now.
When scouting for a space for their dream collaboration back in late 2004, Troy and Jesse had all but given up on the East Village. And not for any other reason than the high price of real estate below 14th Street.
“We didn’t think we could afford it,” explains Jesse, who grew up in downtown NYC. “So we were looking in Clinton and Chelsea. [Then] one night my Mom was at a party and met the woman who owns this building on Orchard Street. She told her the storefront space had just opened up. We went down to check it out and both immediately thought, perfect. My parents’ first reaction to the neighborhood was, ‘Oh has it changed!’ It’s even changed from when I remember it. My parents remember the East Village as eclectic and artsy. I remember it as gritty. Now there’s a W Hotel opening up down here. A lot of the businesses are getting pushed out. It’s hard to be okay with that.”
Very hard. The thought of slick yuppie hotel patrons over-running Orchard Street is more than slightly demoralizing. But maybe that’s for later. Today the neighborhood still embraces the interesting – the singular – and Invisible is a testament to that. And conversely, the Dennings are quick to celebrate where they’re at.
“Below 14th Street – there’s just something about it. It feels like home. We love it down here. The neighborhood is non-judgmental. Our neighbors are all very friendly. The restaurants are great – Café Charbon sent us champagne for our grand opening, and the owner of Inoteca is now one of Troy’s customers. The shopping is great. The only thing we miss is a good magazine store.”
And if that’s all it takes to keep small, inspiring businesses like Invisible NYC right where they belong, hell, I’ll be out there tomorrow hawking magazines on the corner of Stanton and Orchard. Because right at the heart of it, there’s something extraordinary happening here: in one modestly-sized storefront space, witness art subsidizing art. Two forums colliding for the better and complementing each other in the most compelling of ways. And it’s all going down in a neighborhood storied for embracing what’s gutsy and new. Let’s hope it keeps on. For our sake and the sake of the Lego men.
Joshua Abram Howard’s exhibit Novelties is running now through November 19th. Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 8:00pm.
INVISIBLE NYC | 148 Orchard Street | PH: 212-228-1358
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October 20, 2005
The Tell-Tale Penis
by Jessica Cogan
We are now in the dull, dark and soundless days of autumn that Poe described. The air has a gloomy, oppressive chill. The desolate sky grows dark too soon. Nature everywhere turns a dreary brown and dies. Melancholy thoughts turn naturally to the grave and mortality. And we face our darkest, most insufferable fears – misery, death and… puberty.
Yes, puberty, that mythical, miserable time when we learn firsthand just how ugly and uncomfortable growing up can be (two words: Chelsea Clinton). Now one brave filmmaker has tackled the ugly beast and handled it with just the Gothic touch it deserves.
Late Bloomer is a short film by director Craig Macneill. It follows a boy on a horrifyingly humorous trip through Ms. Lovecraft’s sex ed class. You remember, don’t you? All the discomfort of pronouncing “vagina” aloud. Of envisioning Fallopian tubes and ovaries in the girl sitting next to you. And, most terrifyingly, of your body’s own mutinous reaction to the lesson.
The film’s voiceover is spot-on for a Poe narrator – all twitchy and agitated and supremely articulate. He guides us through the apprehension, the terror and the, ahem, climax of the lesson. The frantic storytelling is well supported by the wonderfully cacophonous score by Brooklyn’s One Ring Zero.
Late Bloomer was written by Clay McLeod Chapman and is loosely based on the bizarre works of H.P. Lovecraft. An award-winner at Sundance, the film is screening Friday, October 21st at Bluestockings in New York. Go ahead -- face your fears. Because now, they’re funny.
Late Bloomer, was an official selection at the 2005 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL, SXSW Film Festival (*Best of Comedia), Calgary Int'l Film Festival, Film Anthology Archives, Atlantic Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Cinequest Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, Montreal Comedia Film Festival (Best of the Fest), Lake Placid Film Festival (Audience Award: Best Short Film), CineVegas International Film, Rhode Island Int’l Film Festival, Los Angeles Int’l Short Film Festival, St. Louis Int’l Film Festival, Long Island Film Festival, One Reel Int’l Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Museum of Modern Art in San Diego.
On The Web | www.northlakefilms.com
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October 19, 2005
ABC No Rio
by Dinika Amaral
Whoever thinks the activism of the '60s is dead is dead wrong. I was one of these ‘whoever’ people, but an afternoon chat with ABC No Rio’s Steve Englander left me feeling like Warren Beatty must have felt as John Reed in Reds, a raging idealist eager to change the world. Of course, Reed did his bit by trying to fix the earth with political radicalism. ABC No Rio treads the gentle, yet explosive path of art activism.
This year ABC No Rio is celebrating its 25th anniversary and the finale of a year long series of events is their 25th Anniversary Gala Benefit & Silent Auction, which is this Thursday, 20th October from 6-10 PM. Participating in the auction will be some of the founding members and people who have exhibited at Rio over the years like Kiki Smith and Tom Otterness. Other artists include Maureen Connor ‘Tea and Sympathy,’ Mike Estabrook ‘Shrinky Dink Bug Demons,’ Robert Flynt ‘Untitled,’ David B. Frye ‘The bigoted evangelist Neal Horsley laying with a beast of the field’ and Robert Goldman ‘Electriced.’ Even Yoko Ono has contributed a black and white signed poster that has the words ‘Imagine Peace’ in bold, centered and in all caps.
The sheer range of art items for sale is impressive. Artist Paul Clay performs an experiment on data of scientists’ phonic experiments of the inner ear hairs of alligators, which he found online. The new information Clay’s efforts bring to light are revealed in his one hour DVD video titled, ‘Alligator Phono.’
Since its founding in the 1980s ABC No Rio has come to mean much more than a ‘Community Art Center’ to the downtown Delancey Street neighborhood. Rio transcends its neighborhood and has become an emotional and professional asset to socially and politically engaged artists. Young and old are embraced by family Rio; some verse-spewing poets are in their mid-fifties. Englander confidently says that we’d be hard pressed to find another place like it in the Big Apple (internet surfing and investigations through a couple of my artist friends have proven futile, therefore Englander is correct).
Rio’s most famous show was the 1980 "The Real Estate Show," where artists and activists banded together at an abandoned building on Delancey Street, before homelessness and gentrification hit NYC, to oppose high rent among other things. This protest got Rio a tremendous amount of publicity and in subsequent negotiations the city gave the artists 156 Rivington Street, the present day location of ABC No Rio.
Similar to CBGB’s predicament, the city tried to evict Rio, but Rio fought back. While the jury’s still out on CBGB, Rio won. After a sign-off by the mayor the city will transfer the building over to Rio for $1. The benefit and auction are Rio’s efforts to raise funds for the $700,000 renovations the city holds them responsible for. And raise the funds they will. They must because NYC’s collective artist community cannot do without Rio’s dark room, silk screen shop, technological resources, blogs, online artist and activist interactive network and one of the east coast’s largest libraries of 15,000 zines and alternative magazines, featuring publications like Maximum Rock & Roll, Punk Planet and others.
The overall mission of ABC No Rio is to have activists be more socially aware of the politics of culture and vice versa for the artists. The upcoming exhibit "Three Cities Against The Wall" takes this vision to an international level. Artists were chosen to do three exhibits for three exhibitions scheduled to open simultaneously in three cities: Tel Aviv, Ramallah and New York City. Israeli, Palestinian and American artists are featured together for the first time in Israel. True to Rio’s purpose, the artists use their art to demonstrate against the wall the Israelis are building.
When asked about changes in the neighborhood, Englander smiles and says, “The East Village is actually a village, everyone knows everyone,” then he sighs and the smile leaves his eyes, “but artists can no longer afford to live in the neighborhood.”
Perhaps this is what drives artists and activists to save ABC No Rio, which has been their haven amidst the yuppie-sea of uppity nouveau Manhattanite wannabes.
ABC NO RIO: 25th Anniversary
October 20th, 6-10PM
TICKET PRICES BEGIN AT $40
FOR ON-LINE AUCTION PREVIEW AND RESERVATIONS:
Join us for cocktails, buffet, performances, guest DJs, brilliant conversation and spirited bidding!!!
Proceeds to benefit the ABC No Rio Building Renovation Fund.
SILENT AUCTION with work by Carl Andre, Jonathan Berger, Jennifer Berklich, Mike Bidlo, Kathe Burkhart, Mary Campbell, Amy Chan, Patty Chang, Paul Clay, Ernest Concepcion, Maureen Connor, Thom Corn, Peter Cramer, CRASH, Jody Culkin, Peggy Cyphers, DAZE, Mike Diana, Eric Drooker, Stefan Eins, Mike Estabrook, Ebon Fisher, Fly, Robert Flynt, David B. Frye, FUCKIN REVS, Chitra Ganesh, Robert Goldman, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Judy Glantzman, Day Gleeson, Mike Glier, A. Banks Griffin, Mimi Gross, GRRRR.net, Bob Gruen, Hans Haacke, Julie Hair, Gibby Haynes, Geoffrey Hendricks, Brian Higbee, Becky Howland, Patrizia Iglesias, Bill Jacobson, Vandana Jain, Stephen Lack, Gabrielle Leidloff, Leslie Lowe, Noah Lyon, Anne Arden McDonald, Mac McGill, Manny Migrino, Peter Moore, Joseph Nechvatal, Pierre Obando, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Francis Palazzolo, Kembra Pfahler, Philli, Rick Prol, Carlo Quispe, Ted Rall, James Romberger, Christy Rupp, Max Schumann, Scott Seaboldt, James Sheehan, Gregory Sholette, Ethan Shoshan, Zak Smith, Kiki Smith, Hugh Steers, Pat Steir, Swoon, Tabboo! Stephen Tashjian, Seth Tobocman, Marguerite Van Cook, Anton Van Dalen, Tom Warren, Jack Waters, David Wells, John White, Dale Wittig, Virgil Wong.
DEITCH PROJECTS | 18 WOOSTER STREET | NYC
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October 15, 2005
Penny Arcade
Interview by Mikal Saint George
Photos by Evan Sung
Penny Arcade is not an interview subject. Penny Arcade is a one-woman cultural prism. She bends and refracts the light of human experience and displays shades and colors of a shared spectrum we never knew existed and at times were afraid to look at. More than just entertainment or a hipster “happening” the Arcade experience is a journey through space, time and thought. Not everyone has appreciated this.
Those who shun seatbelts and helmets will ride happily. In fact, they will walk away with new insights into their own reality - jagged edges and all - grateful for the opportunity. By displaying her nude psyche in her work Penny has become a mirror to her audience. For many however, looking in the mirror is difficult. Not because of the blemishes, thinning hair, and gravity-beaten body parts – make-up and a weekend at The Golden Door will take care of that. It is the realization of the harsh banality that instead of resisting, so many of us have instead drunk, sucked and snorted - hoping to dull the pain of reality with the falsely protective veneer of conformity.
Penny Arcade is the personification of opposite. Diminutive in size she is still a larger than life physical presence – her famously voluptuous figure the embodiment of feminine abundance and maternal largesse. She is humbled and surprised by her influence while being fully aware of her power and patiently awaiting full recognition. She is uninterested in, say, developing Sandra Bernhard’s eye for haute couture yet has created a signature style that is off limits, really to everyone – it is pure Penny.
Her thoughts shoot out like bullets. Her ideas, her words vying to stretch and pull in one hundred directions all at once. A creative taffy pull, the evolutionary process condensed, sped up and stuffed in a cleavage bearing vintage halter dress. It is not possible or necessary to keep her on track. She is the conductor of this train of thought and it is best to admire the view and take in the journey for its full value. When she gets you to the destination she has in mind, the seemingly disparate thoughts, the sudden subject changes, will fall into place and make more sense than you thought possible. Over time her thoughts will become more powerful in your own mind with the growing resonance of an unseen but heartfelt guiding spirit.
Meeting with Penny was, for me, a bit of a harmonic convergence and I think of her constantly. After our interview in late August I went to work on several film and TV projects that had me on location – outdoors – in New York. Working outdoors on location is always a challenge. Production is frequently stopped by passer bys screaming “Hey, what are you doing, making a movie?” Was it the lights and camera that gave it away? These chronic interruptions and overall lack of respect for the doing of our job is viewed by the general public as perfectly acceptable and even considered an inalienable right by many.
It would not be considered acceptable however, if I were to walk into an accountant’s office and scream, “Hey what are you doing? Adding numbers? Are you adding numbers for any famous people? Can I add some numbers too?” This kind of interruption would require them to start their whole project over again from the very top. If this were to happen several times throughout the day a simple task could actually take 18 hours to complete. I of course would get huffy when security asked me to leave and tell all the accountants that they are just a bunch of “nobodies” anyway.
The point being that artists, regardless of the medium or level of proficiency are regarded, at best as a commodity, a marketing tool - especially helpful in increasing property values (just look at Astor Place). At worst, a plaything, a piece of celluloid created specifically for momentary amusement undeserving of the kind of simple respect commonly extended to the kid steaming milk at Starbucks.
One day, between takes I make eye contact with a certain well-groomed blonde making her way through our makeshift set on a midtown sidewalk. You know the one; oh I can’t remember her name. She works in marketing or P.R. or something? It will come to me. Anyway, she has a commanding presence, I notice this immediately. But, I ask myself, what precisely is it that commands (demands?) attention? I work in film and television, contribute to various arts magazines, and occasionally go out after dark just for fun. I am accustomed to celebrities, have seen star power up close and thoroughly enjoy it. Am I sensing the gifted white heat of a true star?
No, it is not that kind of charisma, per se, that is her…Oh, what is her name??? I wish I could remember! Is it a physical thing? A stimulation of the aesthetic side? Her perfectly cut and colored hair sporting five or six shades of blonde? No, 500.00 haircuts are a dime a dozen around here. The too tight jeans worn with Prada flip flops and a Louis Vuitton bag almost big enough to pack for a weekend in Provence? No, that’s old news. I know, the unmistakable air of refinement and elegance that is the result of generations of impeccable breeding…yeah right, we all know it is not worth continuing that thought. Let’s see, what could it be?
I notice her unusual features. They stand out to me because she is sooo well known for pointing out the physical shortcomings, real or imagined by her, of anyone she comes across - usually anyone who has less money than she. Oh, come on! What is her name? She accidentally paved a new drive way or something for, like, a country club in the Hamptons or Rhode Island? Whatever. As we make eye contact she slightly lowers her eyelids and gives a faint, smirky smile. Mona Lisa realizing she just swallowed a bad clam.
I know what it is! I know what makes her a standout! No, it’s not just photocopying her father’s Rolodex and calling it a business of her own. It’s that unmistakable air of smugness! The kind that comes from half a generation of too much money and cheating your way through prep school! The kind that gives you the indisputable right to plan photo opportunities at the greatest museums in the world like M.O.M.A and the MET! You hire DJs and host birthday parties for rap stars at these hallowed venues – you have heard that they keep art there too. Kind of like a closet. Only without the backlit shoe rack. If her name comes to me I will let you know.
An actress I was working with tells me the story of taping an episode of MTV’s The Real World. A commercial she had recently shot was premiering during this particular episode. She comes home, rewinds the tape and fast-forwards in search of her spot. She is semi-astounded at what she sees. Barely post-adolescent kids yelling, drinking, then crying on the phone. It is same sequence of events, over and over again for the duration of the episode. Somewhere in Dante’s Inferno there is a circle for the insipid where poor souls are forced to sit at badly lit bars and watch eternal loops of The Real World on video screens while being force fed shots of Jagermeister. Watch it in fast forward and get 27 minutes of your life back – and possibly avoid eternal damnation.
In 1991 when The Real World premiered on MTV it held great promise. It seemed to be following in the groundbreaking footsteps of the legendary Loud family. This is, of course, back in the days when MTV still actually had a little something to do with music and had yet to become a marketing tool for tee shirts. Not surprisingly the program has degenerated into young men who use the words “bro” and “dude” every other second and whiney girls who scream their demands for respect as “strong women” all while constantly getting drunk and having sex with the boys of the house in the ubiquitous hot tub. Lance Loud must turn in his grave every time he sees the trail he blazed into cultural history abandoned for an escalator to the mall and a gift card for Claire’s Accessories. Never, ever watch anything about anyone who has a less interesting life than you do.
I have recently read that the average man in his mid to late thirties living in New York City earns 43,000.00 per year. Surprising considering Manhattan’s high cost of living. One would think the average would be more like 150,000.00. Perhaps what is even more surprising is the fact that the lifestyles of the two would not be significantly different. Both would be working feverishly to support their crappy one-bedroom apartments, obsessing over retirement, social security and credit card debt. The main difference being that Mr. 150,000.00 per year can afford a better brand of vodka to drink away his hopes and dreams while briefly stifling his anxiety over the career he does not want and the life he does not have. They are both grateful for Internet porn.
We meet with Penny Arcade at the downtown studio she has maintained for more than 20 years. The neighborhood, like everywhere else on Manhattan Island, is filling with chic little bars, bistros and luxury loft spaces. Step through the looking glass that is Penny’s front door however and it is 1983 all over again. I half expect a pissed-off Lydia Lunch to come stumbling down the silver spray-painted hallway resplendent in ripped fishnets and stilettos on her way to cop.
Mikal Saint George: Did you have a bad reputation?
Penny Arcade: Yes.
MSG: You were a bad girl?
PA: You know I have whole show about it called Bad Reputation and what I say is:
When a girl is branded bad at 12 her world falls apart. She is rejected by her family, kids her own age and society all at the same time. Being a bad girl is not about wearing too much make-up, too short skirts or fishnet stockings. It is about being cut out and left out of society because you can’t handle the pain in your life in a way society thinks is appropriate. So you are mute with rage, you act out, you’re bad.
I had a really bad reputation. Mostly from other kids, based on the fact that I didn’t fit in and that I was outspoken. Also interestingly enough, when I was twelve there was another girl who was also – I’m Italian, first generation born in America – but this girl had actually migrated. I met her, when she was ten and her mother worked in same sweatshop as my mom. She was a year older than me and she actually impersonated me and went around fucking all these boys. These Puerto Rican boys and doing all this intense stuff and saying she was me! Which I always say, how bad was her life if she thought I had a great life?
Then I got put in reform school when I was 13 with these nuns, the Sisters of the Shepherd – that movie The Magdalene Sisters was based on those nuns. Two years later she ended up there. I had actually found out from a guy in downtown New Britain, Connecticut – where everybody used to call me Gidget, that was my nickname (laughs) yeah, I know pretty funny. I was chatting with this hood on Main Street and he said “Oh, what’s your name?” I said my name is Gidget and he said, “Your not Gidget! I know Gidget – she’s a slut!” I’m like, no I’m Gidget and he’s like, “No your not, you don’t look anything like her!” Then some other girl who got put away after me said you know, this girl Fortunata -- that was her name! Imagine! Fortunata! That she was impersonating me, which is so crazy. I have been thinking I want to write a film script about it.
MSG: I was about to say I used read scripts as part of my job with a movie studio and nothing this good ever came across my desk!
PA: I know! The Sacred Heart Academy for Wayward Girls was where I was put away with nuns. Three or four of the nuns I interacted with were former fashion models! I actually want to do a Disney treatment. Two of them were lesbians. Then there was Mother Marc who was my favorite.
MSG: That is just incredible! You must write this!
PA: I know. I did it in England last year with an English cast but I didn’t have access to the people I work with in New York. The dancers were great but they were all hip-hop dancers. I couldn’t really do there what I do in New York. I am basically the person who started using erotic dancers and stripping and burlesque in 1989 – or as I like to say - before the burlesque revival there was the burlesque backlash. Somebody had to start it! I tend to get left out of that history because people want a career and they don’t tend to talk about that. So what happened is because I didn’t have access to the kind of dancers that I normally work with, which are a combination of erotic dancers and jazz dancers - people who are highly skilled, I ended up going back to the script and writing more of a one-person show out of it.
When I got involved with the gay world is when I got put away. They let me go home once a month and because I was totally ostracized in my hometown because I had been put away - in 1963 that was a really big deal. I ended up meeting this guy named Larry Buscaino who was this totally flamboyant, completely out fag. He was amazing, completely a dandy. Always carried his guitar. People would say “Your queer,” and he would say, “What about it?” That is why I have so much trouble with the way the so-called gay world is now. When I hear the term gay role model, I have exactly the same reaction to it as the term emerging artist. It’s like, you know, no one needed gay role models in the 1960s. That whole protectionist attitude! Yeah, lets pull people kicking and screaming out of the closet to be our role model. Why does a role model have to be someone who is famous and successful in the world?
MSG: It’s and AD campaign…
PA: What is that about? It’s a really pathetic idea because real stars are not manufactured. Any star – any one – as we know can become…I mean Kathy Hilton? Give me a break! Everyone knows real stars and has real stars in their lives. Real stars are irrepressible. They don’t need to be manufactured.
I started going to gay bars when I was fourteen. I would come out once a month when I came home. I met Larry Buscaino in this pizza parlor in my town. When I came on these once-a-month weekends I would climb out my window and he and this bunch of queens would come and pick me up at 11:00 at night when everybody in my family was asleep and take me to these gay bars in Hartford, Connecticut.
The thing that is wrong with the gay world today, like the art world, is that the gay world that I grew up in was a multi-generational thing. The really cool people were mostly over 40. The people that you wanted to work your way up to were the people over 40 who hung out at a certain table in the gay bar. You would try to position yourself so that you would hear those conversations. It was not only multi-generational, it was multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-economic strata. The really incredible stuff that happened in the 1960s happened because it was that clash and that combination of low art/high art where somebody who was a car mechanic by day but was a major opera head would be talking with somebody who was an opera head who was the head of a bank. That’s why the kind of art that took place in the 1960s happened - because of those kinds of combinations. I hate to break this news to people but [sotto whispers] there were people who weren’t even gay! Hanging out in gay bars! Because people who were different hung out in gay bars and nobody ever asked anybody what their sexual orientation was. In a gay bar in the 1960s it was like, wow, you want to be there? That’s cool.
That whole concept of identity politics, people were not applying their attention to identity issues. They were applying it to the real problems in the world, to the major problems of the world. Not just to identity problems which is counter evolutionary and counter revolutionary.
I started identifying myself as a fag hag because at that time in the early 1960s there were not a lot of girls in the gay bars. There would be a couple of fag hags but not many, a few lesbians but not many because dykes didn’t really go out then. When people would hear me, and of course when you are young you mimic everybody, everybody would be like, “Is she real? Is she real!” Of course because I was an obnoxious, rebellious child I would say, “I didn’t spend two months and 25,000.00 in Casablanca to have you ask me if I’m real!” So then there was rumors all through the late 1960s that Penny Arcade was a sex change.
MSG: I remember hearing that. So let me ask you something. Fortunata, starting very early in life, was imitating you to some degree. Pretending to be you. Did you feel like that was a glimpse of what your future was going to be like? You have influenced so many artists; I don’t know if you even realize how many people (laughing) steal from you!
PA: I do. I always say that the longer it takes for an artist to get recognition the luckier they are. It’s human nature to stop evolving once you get the juice. When I was 36 Karen Finley and Holly Hughes were getting written about and getting a lot of attention and I wasn’t, even though I had as big, if not bigger in some cases, an audience than they did. I was very resentful. I can remember saying, "This is as good as I get. I don’t get better than this! I need to get reviewed now!" And I didn’t. I didn’t get reviewed for another four years and the interesting thing was that work changed so exponentially in those four years, which really made me feel very humble because I know that I am just like anybody else. I wanted the attention, I wanted the reviews, I wanted the acknowledgement but if I had gotten it I never would have evolved past that. I never would have done it because I didn’t believe that I could. I didn’t have that kind of faith in my own self. I think for me one of things that is curious and unique about me is that I didn’t really have sense of who I was until I was in my 40s.
In 1991 I got a telegram at PS 122 because The New York Times had written a 300 word blurb about me [she then states with wry sarcasm], they weren’t up to writing a review, and I got this telegram from somebody in Connecticut who apparently went to school with me. I have the telegram somewhere, she said:
Dear Susan, [her given name]
I was so happy to see this in the New York Times.
I always knew that you were going to be somebody really famous and important.
Or else you were going to be dead.
Marilyn
Could it be this girl Marilyn who lived down the road from me when I was in 7th grade? It was very interesting, I have never really understood how I was perceived. I never agreed with people’s perception of me but I never really understood it, even in New York. I always say, when Penny Arcade is considered the weirdest person downtown there’s a problem. I grew up in a time of giants, with Jack Smith and Jackie Curtis. People who were really weird! The world has changed so much in the East Village and downtown New York over the past 15 years.
I was always drawn to highly self-individuated people who had developed their own point of view. You develop a point of view over 30 years, you don’t develop a point of view over five years.
MSG: Tremendously!
PA: These people who can’t handle me, how would they ever handled Jack Smith? They would never have been able to be in the same room as Jack Smith? I am constantly surrounded by artists who are in their early 30s and want me to treat them like we are equals but we’re not. I’m 25 years older than them. I never said more than “Hello” to John Giorno until I was 44 years old, I was in too much awe of John Giorno. It’s a different world. The East Village has always been Bohemia. It is all about your lineage as an artist. The gay scene was also about your lineage and who your mentors were, the people whose footsteps you were walking. Before everybody wanted to be an artist there was the concept of living an artistic life, which is much harder to do. That was always my goal, to live an artistic life. I was always drawn to highly self-individuated people who had developed their own point of view. You develop a point of view over 30 years, you don’t develop a point of view over five years.
MSG: Thank you - absolutely!
PA: As I say in New York Values, when you are older your own authenticity is a great comfort to you. A life cannot be purchased, a life cannot be downloaded. You have to live your life and you have to walk your path. That is your reward. That is what always drew Quentin Crisp and I to each other. Quentin recognized in me that I was…as Keith Richards once said to me “Hello, fellow traveler.” A fellow traveler. A person who is on their path. Everybody has a path but not everybody chooses to walk their path. Some people choose to try to purchase a path or copy a path.
MSG: Yeah, they try to buy a path off the rack!
PA: Right. I know that a lot of people are influenced by the kind of work that I do. Not even counting New York or London or Sidney or any of the places where I know that I have made a very profound impact in the kind of work people do. I was in Huntsville, Texas. There is an art school there – I think it is called Sam Houston University – and they have a big writing, dance and theatre program. I was brought there to do a lecture demonstration. Dr. Miller who is the head of the art school – a great, amazing person – had said to me, “You know a lot of the kids here are big fans of your spoken word. They have this book Verses That Hurt that you were in and they would like you to autograph it, would you consider autographing it?” I said yeah, I’ll do it.
So at the end of my lecture/demonstration I decide to do No Mona Lisa, which is in that book:
No Mona Lisa
I am magnum mouthed
I am honey snatched
My flavor changes constantly
No Mona Lisa
I stroll like a sailor
Bullets pass through me
And I keep moving
No Mona Lisa
No sidelong glance
Supposition, preposition, have no place in my communication
When I talk
When I talk
When I talk
You know exactly what I mean
Mona Lisa has no mouth
No cunt
She stops at the waist
I hate that bitch
No Mona Lisa
I don’t price-down, preview or go on sale
No auction
I’m no collector’s item
No creator’s pet
No Mona Lisa
I don’t hang around
But if I have it's for you, your lucky
You can take it to the track
You can take it to the bank
You can deposit it
No Mona Lisa
I cannot be catalogued or dissertated
I cannot be viewed from a different angle
I cannot be seen in a different light
No Mona Lisa
No sidelong manipulation
I never had a father
I never learned how to be that kind of whore
You need a daddy to practice that kind of stalking
You need a daddy
I never apprenticed to my mother
I was not well for that center of attention and protection
I was nobody’s angel
Nobody’s princess
Nobody’s baby
I grew wild, uncultivated, ungroomed, unprotected and unpromoted
To a position of power
I know what you want, when you want it, how you want it
I deliver without a sermon
My religion has no Pope
No choir
No hope
I am a loner
You are lucky
I never learned how to simmer contentedly
I boil over continuously
Hot, sweet syrup between my legs
Hot, sweet syrup between my legs
When I’m in love I stay wet all the time
When I’m in love
When I’m in love
When I’m in love I stay wet all the time
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
I stay wet all the time
I stay wet all the time
Mona Lisa has no mouth
No cunt
She stops at the waist
I hate that bitch
Mona Lisa sits
I stand
Two lightning bolts in my fist
A crescent moon over my cunt
I don’t need special lights, special glass or a smoke-free environment
I am 3-D
You can touch me
I touch back, talk back, bite back
No Mona Lisa
I don't hang around
I tell you the truth
I am ruthless
No Mona Lisa
You are lucky
MSG: (along with everyone else in the room) Bravo! Jesus Christ!
PA: I performed it and afterwards all these kids – which of course were all the weirdo, queer kids – all came up. One said, “Wow, I have seen that performed so many times but I have never seen it the way you did it.” I said…what? He said, “Oh, that is one of the most popular slam pieces in Texas.” I’m like…it is??? He said, “Yeah, I’ve seen like 25 or 30 different people do it. All these different girls and some boys did it.” I’m thinking, I wrote that when I was 45, how does an 18 year old do that piece?
MSG: Do you like the fact that an 18 year old is able to grasp, or at least attempt to grasp the work of a woman in her 40s?
PA: Well, I’ve never lived a life where I would be a particular age because you learn how to be a particular age by society. I ran into Kembra [Pfahler] from Karen Black and she said, “Oh my God, I am going to be 40 and I have been on Avenue B since I was 17.” I said well, yeah, I’m going to be 50 and I’ve been on Avenue B since I was 17. She said, “You don’t look 50, you are 50?” I said, "Why would I look 50, I am still living the same life I was living when I was 17!"
The truth is that when you are young there is a great deal of insulation between you and the world. As you get older that insulation wears away. That is why people become so frightened as they get in their 40s and 50s, because all of the sudden everything that your mother told you is true. You find out that the world is a very cold and inhumane place, especially if you have chosen to go your own way your whole life and you just find out that there is not a lot of comfort in the world. The world is a very harsh place…mostly.
I think in terms of someone who is 18 and doing No Mona Lisa…Verses That Hurt came out in 1996. The 7 inch A Cunt Is A Useful Thing came out in 1992. I met girls at Outfest in 2000 who were 23, 22 or 20 who had bought that 7 inch when they were 11. I think they are responding to that voice of isolation because I am isolated, I am an isolated person. Young people feel their isolation very acutely before they try merging. Quentin Crisp said (She channels his voice and mannerisms dead-on), “Young people will always rebel against their elders and conform with people their own age.” That is largely what happens. I will walk around in this neighborhood and there are people who are 23 and they will look at me and they will try to ascribe some kind of behavior on me based on the fact that I am not 27. I think that is hysterically funny.
MSG: When did that happen though? We have all witnessed the homogenization of the East Village. We have all seen East Islip move on to Avenue A, but when did everyone start living from the same press release?
PA: Part of it is, and I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but the show New York Values, which I did in 2002, is about the comodification of rebellion. Rebellion has been commodified which takes the total teeth out of it. People come up to me who are 20, 23 years old and they say, “I am an activist too!” You don’t call yourself an activist! Your community calls you an activist. It’s like saying you’re a saint.
You don’t call yourself an activist! Your community calls you an activist. It’s like saying you’re a saint. You’re not an activist because you occasionally show up in your dorm or a coffee shop and say something annoying.
MSG: It’s like being a self-proclaimed diva. It doesn’t count when you call yourself a diva. Everyone else has to ascribe that to you and then maybe…maybe you qualify.
PA: It would be all right if people who were calling themselves activists were actually activists. You can say you’re a Buddhist without meditating. You can say you’re a communist without going to meetings but you can’t say you’re an activist with out acting. You’re not an activist because you occasionally show up in your dorm or a coffee shop and say something annoying. You have to be selflessly working, usually behind the scenes. People think that being an activist means that you are standing up and being seen. Activists are behind the scenes.
MSG: It’s also not about working merely for the title. People are so salivating for their 15 minutes…
PA: Its all been gentrified. There has been a gentrification of neighborhoods but there is also a gentrification of ideas. What I see in the whole Riot Grrrl movement, which I really embraced in 1992 because Riot Grrrls started coming to me. I said here is a feminism that I can identify with. I always was a feminist but I was not a second wave feminist, which I was totally annoyed by. When I was 17 all the second wave feminists like Robin Morgan really wanted me in their camp because I was 17 and I said to them, "This is just tea party for the wives of leftist political assholes." And they weren’t mad at me, they still wanted me to be with them. I told them I don’t hate men! All the men I know are either gay or they're OK. Amazingly enough I had been raped five times before I was 18 and I still didn’t think that it was men – just men – that were raping me. Something was raping me and it happened to be men but I didn’t think that this meant that all men – I didn’t think rape was the province just of men.
MSG: That is incredibly profound! Where in you did you find the strength to maintain that outlook?
PA: I don’t know, I really don’t know. I know when I was 37 an astrologer was doing my chart and she said, “Oh, you have Jupiter rising and that gives you a great deal of grace, you are a person of tremendous grace.” I said, "Really?" She knew a lot about me and I asked why she had said that and she said, “Well, for instance you were raped five times before you were 18 and you don’t hate men!”
I think there are some elements that are in our nature, it doesn’t matter what age you are. I know when I turned 20, Lisa Robinson, Danny Fields and a whole bunch of New York tastemakers in 1970 gave me a birthday party and they all said they were so relieved that I was no longer a teenager. They said that I was hard to take as a teenager because I was that kind of idiot savant child. But then I got very dumb in my 30s and 40s so it doesn’t count. You have your periods where you collapse then you have your areas where you are profound. I think there is this profoundness in everybody. We just have our own little area where something grows really well there all by itself and then the rest of it we have to work hard to develop. A lot of the stuff that we really need to develop we don’t want to develop. We're afraid to develop because we think we can’t develop it. We all know what we need but we’re afraid or we think that we can’t.
MSG: How do you get over fear? You must experience fear at some point.
PA: I experience fear all the time. I live with fear constantly and I talk about it constantly.
MSG: Maybe you don’t get over fear but how do you stand up to it and move forward?
PA: You first have to be willing to tolerate the feeling. You have to sit with your fear for a really long time to discover what the nature of it is. I am somebody who spent years and years and years running away from my fear. Even though I ran away from my fear by running into it. That is the way some of us do it. That’s why I feel right now the way I thought I would feel when I was about 27. I am sort of like just figuring it all out now. Quentin Crisp used to say, "The purpose of life is to reconcile your glowing opinion of yourself and what your friends call the trouble with you." That is absolutely true. That is also a minefield. If your really isolated you may have one or two people in your life who tell you what is wrong with you, which we never want to hear. If you are not terribly isolated you get a lot of different ideas from different people about what is wrong with you. What people think you should do.
When I feel like that I will often put on Otis Redding, I have lived my life through Rock & Roll. A lot of my performance is designed so that I can play records and make people listen to them! In real life if somebody comes to my house I try to make them listen to a song and they won't do it. But when they are in the theatre and there are 300 of them then they will all listen to the song. I got that from Otis Redding, that point where he sings, “I cant do what ten people tell me to do” in Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay – it’s a great moment in that song. That’s the element.
You don’t want to get rid of your self-doubt – that is your only tool as an artist!
I remember being at Mass Art and being there talking to their Masters program and this guy – I was talking like this, like I do, all different subjects – put up his hand and goes, “Can you just give us something that I can go back to my studio with?”
MSG: What does that even mean?
PA: He wanted to go and make work and he thought the visiting artist’s purpose is to give him something to go on so he can make art. I said this is a Masters program right? He said, “Yes.” He was really annoyed with me. I said that means you have been in art school six years, right? He said, “Yes.” I said you have been in art school for six years and you still think something from outside of you is going to make you make art? He said, “Well just tell us when you get rid of self doubt, how long does it take?” I said you don’t want to get rid of your self-doubt – that is your only tool as an artist!
You can always tell the work of people who have gotten rid of their self-doubt. They make horrible, dead work. Fear is the same thing as self-doubt. You need to embrace your fear because everybody comes into this sphere with a few things that are yours, your problems are yours, your fears are yours, your heartbreak is yours. Mining that is so important in terms of living an artistic life - which I think is so much more profound than actually being an artist. Everybody’s an artist now. Everybody wants to be an artist. I didn’t even realize that I was an artist until I was in my late 40s, I really didn’t! I was striving to live an artistic life. I was incredibly famous in New York in the late 1960s, which was different than being famous now. I was really well known because the scene was very small and because I was a performer. Oh, and I had 34 DD breasts [back] when the only way you could get those was to be born with them. And because I was a major fag hag. Which is what I started to say earlier.
If you asked John Vacarro - who was my director in the Playhouse of the Ridiculous when I was 17 until I was 21 – even though I was incredibly talented and super high energy, I never had the killer instinct to be a star. I was always a star but everyone wanted me to go to Hollywood and I didn’t want to go. That wasn’t what I wanted. That is why when I made the statement at the Howl! Festival launch where I said that my loyalty to downtown New York was not really rewarded, some people got upset.
What I was really going for was this long-term development. It is kind of strange to me that nine out of ten 24-year-olds know who Margaret Cho is and they have never heard of me. I find that really odd. I was complaining to my shrink about not having a career like Sandra Bernhard or Magaret Cho – which I find ridiculous – and he said, “Susana, you have spent your entire career criticizing the main stream and now you expect them to reward you?”
I realized that, with all do respect to Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard, they blow smoke up the collective gay arse! They are the cheerleaders and I’m not. I am the one who is saying that I am tired of hearing people whine about how hard it is growing up gay and having your family hate you. What about the rest of us? Our families hated us for no reason! At least you have the moral high ground. At least you can say my family hated me because I was gay and you can get on with the rest of your life! Look at me some 30 years later, I’m still saying my mother hated me. I don’t know why she hated me, she never told me! Being a lesbian was just one reason why my mother hated me.
For the past six years when I go to universities I have said, "You are not queer." You are not a 23 year old queer with your 27 queer friends – queer means you have no friends. Queer means you have sustained a period of exclusion so profound that it would never occur to you in a million years to exclude anyone on the basis of something so trivial as their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, their gender or the color of their skin.
Also, with what happened with the gay world, everything has been rearranged. Who would ever have believed 30 years ago gay people would judge people on the basis of their sexuality. That’s really weird! Margaret Cho’s huge success does not really come from her saying she is bi-sexual. It comes from her positing that she is a dyke.
I toured all over the world doing Bitch!Dyke!FagHag!Whore! which was mainstream, in Australia I did 140 shows in 14 months, I’m totally mainstream in Australia. Last night at dinner my friend Richard, a virtuoso violinist, asked, “How could you in 1994 tour a show called Bitch!Dyke!FagHag!Whore! all over the world and be in major newspapers everywhere? How did you do that? It was just part of the zeitgeist, but it just didn’t carry over. People like Lea DeLaria and people who knew about that in 1994 – Sandra Bernhard, whoever - were not rushing into Gay Pride events saying “Oh my God, you have got to bring in Penny Arcade and Bitch!Dyke!Fag Hag!Whore!”
That has to do with gay marketing and people being careerist. It’s not really about getting the word out there. That’s why I despise gay marketing so much. I have been known to say if I see one more rainbow kitchen magnet I a going to kill somebody! You identify, you brand…queer is not a state of mind. When I started saying queer in the 1970s, it was not against the heterosexual world. It was against the so-called gay people who were deciding who was a part of the gay community and who wasn’t. The people in the 1970s who came out and immediately formed committees and said we couldn’t say dyke or fag or whatever. We were saying queer to upset them. So queer was pre Queer- which is a brand. It’s no longer a state of mind that by force sets you apart.
For the past six years when I go to universities I have said, "You are not queer." You are not a 23 year old queer with your 27 queer friends – queer means you have no friends. Queer means you have sustained a period of exclusion so profound that it would never occur to you in a million years to exclude anyone on the basis of something so trivial as their sexual orientation, their ethnicity, their gender or the color of their skin. You just wouldn’t do it because you have experienced a profound sense of exclusion. Which is what Quentin Crisp was all about. Quentin used to say, “My life has been a journey from the outskirts of the world to heart of humanity.” The great heartbreak of Quentin’s life was not being beaten up in the street in the 1930s because he was different and wore lipstick. The great heartbreak of his life was being put down by gays and lesbians in the 1990s because he wouldn’t conform to the gay company line. That’s something that people are really going to have to come to terms with. As Quentin said in my new documentary Beyond Queer: Bohemian New York and Cultural Amnesia which showed at Outfest, “The answer to are you gay is not I am, I am but, not today, thank you.”
It’s very complex what is happening right now, I think is so dangerous and terrible because people are not understanding backlash. They are not understanding that the flipside of always being left out is that you want to be special. People like me grew up feeling like I can’t be like everyone else and everyone in my town hates me so I am special. It’s so hard now. I find young people are very ageist and really lame. I always say nobody who is young is cool. Not everybody, there are lots of throwbacks. When your young though the most you can do is try not to be uncool so that cool people will let you hang out with them so you can learn to be cool. Nobody is just cool.
MSG: You are absolutely 100,000% correct.
PA: I was saying that in my show Rebellion Cabaret at Fez and there were all these 20-year-olds in the audience giving me the evil eye. I would say I know you hate me but I am not trying to put you down, it is a message of hope! If I thought I was as cool as I was ever going to be at 22, I would have hung myself! There was the idea that you would evolve.
On The Web | www.pennyarcade.tv
Photo Credits:
Clothing by Jill Anderson | 331 E 9th St., NYC
Location: Marquee | 354 Bowery | NYC
Makeup: Bella Makeup Artists
Photos: Evan Sung
Art Direction/Styling: Mikal Saint George
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October 12, 2005
Found: Tyrannosaurus Rex
10 Questions with Found: Tyrannosaurus Rex
On our usual walk to fetch an afternoon caffeine fix we noticed these flyers somebody had put up that read FOUND: TYRANNOSAURUS REX. The flyers had a photo of a toy T-Rex and an email address that you could contact to claim the little beast. We saw similar flyers last summer where items like a mixed tape and a folding chair were also "found" so we were curious as to what this lost and found business was all about.
1. What inspired you to start this project?
The main inspiration for this project was the people of New York City. Having the ability to access this many people in such a confined space is something every artist should take advantage of. Not only are we all jammed together on this island, a lot of the people here are full of creative energy and need a release.
2. What block did you find the T-Rex working?
I found the tyrannosaurus rex between Amsterdam and Broadway on 107th street. I couldn't help but take it in, it looked lost. Due to its illiteracy and lacking the ability to speak, I felt like it had no other place to go. The expenses did make me stop my checks to Children International, but what are you going to do?
3. What has the overall response been to your flyers?
About forty percent of them have been detailed stories of how they have lost this fictional pet. They name it, list things it likes and usually explain how it escaped. Some are just one liners and pretty lame, but my favorites are the ones that use this as an outlet to tell another kind of story that really doesn't have much to do with a lost tyrannosaurus rex.
4. Do you think the disregard to the T-Rex is a reflection on the way our society treats the elderly?
For sure. There are a lot of similarities, the constant hunching over, it being millions of years old, and the crankiness it gets when it doesn't eat before five. Just because it is not in the prime of its existence doesn't mean it is not a functional part of our society. It has a lot of knowledge to share and I think we need to get over its extreme maturity.
5. Has this project lived up to your expectations?
This project totally exceeded my expectations. I started by hanging about 40 flyers just to see what would happen. Over 600 postings later I realized I have created a forum for creative writing. Being a teacher I love to inspire others, and by the responses I get I have been motivated to create more work of my own.
6. Did the T-Rex throw any Jurassic Park/Whitney Houston temper tantrums while you cared for it?
Yes, and it still does. I don't know if it is still accustom to living the diva lifestyle it had in the mid-nineties, but it is about as bitchy as they come. The constant requests for lukewarm soups, manicures and rose pedals in its cage really get to me after a while.
7. Do you think that the anonymous interaction that strangers have with T-Rex reveals something about their own self?
Definitely. I think the people that respond are a lot like me, they are taking a chance creating something that they have no idea if or when there will be a response. They do it just for the love of creating a story. They want to be heard, they want to share and entertain. You gotta love that.
8. Does the T-Rex have a Godzilla complex?
The T-Rex actually has more of a JAWS complex. After the blockbuster hit Jurassic Park, it has been all down hill for the T-Rex. I mean, JAWS II was pretty good, but who really remembers any of the other Jurassic Park movies? They actually had a Jurassic Park III, but that was all about the raptors. Let's face it, the T-Rex is the only creature that has become extinct twice, once in the real world, and once in Hollywood.
9. How does the NYPD feel about your postings?
They think it's funny. I went to court the other day for unlawful posting of an advertisement, and I believe it was the highlight of their day. My hearing was sandwiched between a case of a 16 year old spitting on an attorney because her 23 year old boyfriend had to serve 30 days in prison and a handicapped man accused of parking illegally...what a day. I was psyched because I got off work on one of the most beautiful days in September and didn't have to pay the $145.00 fine.
10. Has T-Rex found its rightful owner?
Not yet, my plan is to give it away to the most convincing/creative story. I have yet to decide how long I will continue the project, but as long as I am still passionate about receiving the stories and making the postings, it could be a long time. As a kid I was into graffiti and some how posting these flyers gives me a taste of that thrill; seeing your art on the streets is always exciting.
On The Web | www.jasonruff.com
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