The Living Centrifuge

People don't like seeing their caca reflected back at them. I just saw a good show at the VIDF, "Stop" by Nadine Thouin. The reactions were galvanised on either side. I'm thinking that when I do the butoh strip piece, I'm going to have to get ready for that kind of reaction. It's a negative, defensive response that people have to work that is not pleasant.

One comment that came from one of my interlocutors on the piece was that the piece felt overarchingly negative, and that she was interested in a more wholistic worldview than that espoused by this piece. I guess I'm of a different mind. I like pieces that are wholistic (Sunyata is one of those), but I get depressed by uber happy pieces, and uplifted by uber dark pieces. I think this is because I provide the missing part of the whole. This piece was dark, it's true, but to me that means that the performer leaves it to the audience to transform - to do their own conscious transformative work. I think this is valuable. It's valuable for artists to leave some work to the audience. I'm also a believer in the uplifting power of art, but this doesn't mean that it has to be didactic, or completely illustrative. Now I'm just saying the same things over and over.

To close though, Karen Finley's work is extremely dark, and violent and depressing, but she's calling for a world based in truth love and beauty, by showing an imperfect, ugly, vastly improvable world. This has value.