Wynne Greenwood is a motherfucking genius.

As a queer feminist, I find representations of myself in American culture seldom. When I do, it’s more often in music (Le Tigre, The Gossip) than in the art world. Seeing Wynne Greenwood‘s video work with K8 Hardy last Saturday night made my queer feminist little light shine brighter than it has in a long time.

New Report, 2005. With K8 Hardy.

At Hiawatha Artist Lofts, she showed several of her and K8′s videos as the first event in Feminist Form, Wynne’s screening series of feminist and queer video from the Pacific Northwest. The screenings will take place monthly, with future locations and dates to be announced.

The videos were pretty simple in form, yet boundless conceptually. In several, Wynne and K8 were news anchors, both named Henry. They plodded forward in their pursuits as news anchors without entirely knowing what they were doing. They were pregnant with. . . motivation, mostly. The videos are hilarious, but at the same time, breathtakingly serious. I think I was sitting on the edge of my seat the entire screening.

For one, they’re sitting as though on a panel; the panelists are Henry Iragary (K8), Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Wynne), a furry pussy (K8′s, we presume) and a breast (Wynne’s, supposedly). Henry and Henry are pregnant with deliberation as they try to talk about the objectification of women. I, for one, felt pregnant with anticipation during their attempts— which were all the while animated by the dislocated (“cut off– as if by a knife”) body parts floating sheepishly next to them. Oh yeah, also: K8′s legs are spread under the table with a camera pointed at her crotch, and Wynne’s shirt is haphazardly pinned up to reveal her left breast.

There are so many things that can go wrong when one attempts to represent feminism that the disappointingly few self-proclaimed feminist artists seem to have largely given up.  A self-proclaimed queer feminist, Wynne Greenwood has not given up, and when you encounter her work you forget that feminism was ever considered a bad word. At least, that’s the way it seemed last Saturday. And each month the crowd is just going to get bigger.

Thank you, Wynne. I’m so glad you live in my city. And I’m so glad the city we live in knows you’re a genius.

Recording Sharon Arnold

Joey Veltkamp just put up a totally lovely interview with Seattle artist/art-community organizer-energizer Sharon Arnold on best of. Sharon’s words and work (made up of papers and fibers and small actions moving towards large schemes) breathe into each other naturally and intelligently.

20 b/p/m, 2008

20 b/p/m (detail), 2008

Part of the show We Built This To Leave (with Ryan Molenkamp and Trevor Johnson at Vermillion), these stitches and intentions are building something wonderful.

PDL at Crawl Space

Last week at Crawl Space‘s closing party/opening reception, we stood outside in the dark with a bunch of art appreciators in an alley off Olive Way, behind a fence, next to a pick-up with speakers, looking down on the street. I really wish I had pictures to share. It was a compelling experience, beholding this performance by PDL.

A white, thirty-something man engaged with passers-by, wearing a mic. We up in the alley could hear his voice, coughs, muffled cursing, and whatever sounds were picked up from the people around him.  We watched him negotiate with friendly strangers as they cut the handcuffs that chained him to a pole. We watched his collection of pennies spill over the sidewalk and into the street. We watched a sweet man pick up the pennies while his companion went inside Starbucks to get a new bag for the pennies. PDL-man asked the sweet guy, “Is that guy with you?” and the sweet guy replied softly but quickly, “He’s my husband.”

That was the only interaction that didn’t elicit laughter from the audience. We laughed when the busker with the violin stopped “playing” her violin, yet the music didn’t stop. We laughed when she darted around stealing clutches of the dropped pennies, nimble and giddy. We laughed when PDL-man hunched over his pennies and grumbled, Bitch. She’s not even playing the fucking violin. We laughed when PDL-man stopped traffic to retrieve his pennies. And when the guys who cut the cuffs were happy and chummy to have helped out, offering their names and handshakes. We stood, in a crowd, and laughed. Yet no one noticed us.

I felt terribly embarrassed for the people who didn’t know they had an audience. I felt guilty that I was having a laugh at their expense. I felt like I’d pulled off some massive accomplishment of fate to have gotten myself on the right side of the fence.

There was this physical fence, but there was also a social/cultural fence that was between this audience and its unwitting spectacle.

The latter is stronger, and more divisive.

People understand the physical fence. In most arenas of practical jokes (such as Punk’d or Candid Camera), people understand that they were simply on the wrong side of the fence. It could have been anyone. At the end, they’re let in on the joke and everyone is on an equal footing again.

Whether we like to admit it or not, Art makes a social/cultural fence that is much more difficult to reconcile. By virtue of education and circumstance, people find themselves so firmly planted on one side that they simply can’t imagine what it would be like to be on the other side. This is the fence that stands between many groups of people and the open door of a contemporary gallery. We in the gallery say, “Look, engage! It’s so easy!” unable to imagine why various members of the “public” won’t cross the meager threshold. They, on the other hand, can’t imagine themselves going inside the gallery; nor what they’d find there; nor what they’d do with themselves once they got there.

I’ve talked to a few art-friends who were, momentarily, on the wrong side of the fence that night in Capitol Hill. They happened upon PDL-man and were engaged, unknowingly watched by an audience, and laughed at. While at first they felt embarrassed to have been put in this position, they ultimately felt secure enough on the right side of the cultural fence to take the hit for Art’s sake and celebrate it.

I’m not saying that this performance wasn’t good or interesting. Actually, I thought it was amazing. The real-time unfolding of the world as a theatre was nothing short of sublime. While Candid Camera and Punk’d share the prankster ethos, they certainly lack the Turner-scale sublimity. That evening, PDL fucked up the way we perceive the world, and the way we inhabit it. That is really hard to do.

From where I’m standing, I’m grateful for it.

Getting To Know You Better Poems: You’ve come to the right place!

I’m pausing regular programming here on this blog to bring you. . .  what you’ve been asking for.

As you savvy readers probably know, when you sign up for a blog, you don’t only get an empty screen on which to collect your thoughts and fling them out into the world. You also get a cryptic, statistical representation of how your blog is used by said world. You can click on “blog statistics” and see what words people googled to arrive at your blog. Most commonly, the search terms are along the lines of: “dressed-up penis” or “nails in paintings” or “Jesus karaoke funny thing.” I suppose those are to be expected.

Unexpected –at least to me– have been the persistent pleas for “getting to know you better poems.” I’m talking a good TEN PERCENT of all total searches. I don’t know if it is one relentless poetry-starved googler who consistently forgets that he’s already clicked on my blog, or if it’s what lots of people are looking for— and then, sadly, not finding. Did you think that getting-to-know-you-better poetry was best left to romantic comedies with Shakespearian plot lines? Think again! I for one am rather touched that people are hungry for poetry as a means of getting to know their acquaintances and friendly-hopefuls.

So today, rather than disappoint yet another soul, I will offer you some getting to know you better poems.

Ahem.

{disclaimer: I know nothing about writing poetry.}

.

what’s that on your lip
some food
or maybe your ex
here like a booger
unbidden
unforgotten
and
dear

.

your hair falls from behind your ear
clumsily
effortlessly
each time like a giddy question
like a puppy
not knowing
when to
stop

.

maybe this elevator rendition of
and she was
is not so bad
if it gives us reason
to look up
give a knowing look
and smile
(did you fart?)

.

i think i know you from before
when you were who you are now
not who you were then
draped in black velvet
in the l.a. heat
you didn’t complain
always
pious

.

perhaps
if i knew you
we could paint our arms blue
(we would have many arms)
and sing in sanskrit
taking dutiful
pauses
to smirk
to
remember
our minds

.

here’s a bear hug
and here are babies clinging
here’s a hairy chest
and here’s a nipple leaking

.

sweet boy.
(really a girl)
that hula hoop shimmies
between
two
worlds.
thank god
your parents are hippies

.

nothing says i love you
like pebbles
in the sand
nothing
says i want you like a
stone
in my hand
i think it has a smiley face