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Photo by Mary Paterson
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by REBECCA ARMSTRONG
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Diary
By REBECCA ARMSTRONG
11.5.09
I missed my first event today. I have 3 or 4 calendars/lists of things I want to see. The only things I seem to be able to keep track of are the things I had to be quite definite about at the beginning. Everything else floats in a nebulous near-cognizance. Today I had to cut my losses. I wanted to see the Street Parade at Washington Square Park, but by the time I remembered to check what time it started, it was starting. So, that piece will be locked in my memory as almost, a thing I wanted to see but can only imagine, something anticipated and mourned, but never within view. All I will have of it is the anticipatory description, and, if I am lucky, the aftermath, either in the form of an official review, documentation, or a friendly description from another Performa-goer. But, of course, now that it is gone, I might just let it go.
11.6.09
Everything is the length of a blog post, a kind of marker for further thought. I suppose that’s what “reviews” are, they are small, they are not deep thinking, they are a response.
I hope to go again tomorrow night to Auf Den Tisch, in order to see the second iteration, to find out something about the script/score: how it works, how it moves, how much of it there is.
11.7.09
I went to 5 events today, the most so far. I can tell I didn’t explore the drop-in ones as deeply as I would have if I hadn’t had a schedule. I might have stayed longer at Ideal Viewer if I hadn’t said I would meet Writing Live at 5 at Snofrid Ruby Distillery. The sensation of being a permanent audience is building up, and wearing away my curiosity. I no longer have that flutter of privilege, at being in a secret club, but the sense of stunned continuing. I cannot quite decide what my primary role is: is it to be a writer, or to be an audience? And, of course, like all performance, especially improvisational or audience dependent performance, there is the sensation that each instant I am letting something I could have seen, been part of, experienced, slip away. And so, I experience nothing, rushing from one event to the next, filling myself with ideas, leaving the input valve wide open and the output valve shut. I think, today, I hit the point of overflowing, and began spilling out the point of entry. Maybe some hours of writing will clear things out a bit.
11/8/09
During lunch today I had an interesting conversation with Ryan [Tracy]. I was talking about Gina Performa and the performance of queerness, or the idea of queering Performa. Some things I want to remember to write about later: 1. Queerness contains, inherently, an awareness of gender as a performance, rather than assuming sex-based gender as normative fact. 2. Though Gina Performa is engaged with the idea of “realness,” she is not performing realness in drag; she is not interested in the “realness” of her gender-switch, which is often a concern in queer communities. She makes no attempt to pass. If anything, she is passing as a straight man dressed as a woman. This could be read as a critique, of both drag and gender. Consider: non-drag drag performance in the context but outside a performance art biennial. As, in fact, an authorized commentator on said biennial. Is this project making queerness an alternate form of critique? (Which it already is?) Is it a camp reiteration of queerness as a critique, or a critique of queerness as a performance? What is it saying about queerness in relationship to the performance art context? Also note: reference in this week’s video to “boyfriend,” the first outing I’ve seen in the project, though I haven’t followed every step. Does this shift the project at all? Why or why not?
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