Bibliography

Archer, Michael. Art since 1960. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002. Print.

Elizabeth Dee. Web. 11 Mar. 2010. .

Lippard, Lucy. "Catalysis: An Interview with Adrian Piper." JSTOR. 1972. Web. 11 Mar. 2010. .

"The Mythic Being; I/You (Her) | Adrian Piper | Walker Art Center |." Collections and Resources. Web. 11 Mar. 2010. .

Adrian Piper

What It's Like, What It Is #3
1991-1992

This video piece was constructed for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a seemingly Minimal white room resembling an arena with tiered seating around a large box in the middle. The box has four television screens, one on each side. Playing on the screens is a middle-aged black man who rotates ninety degrees every so often "insistently inform(ing) the spectator what he was not, stripping away one stereotype after another" (Archer 201).

As time has progressed Piper is moving into different medias and begins to work with video art. Despite this new medium, she is still dealing with the same issues of identity. This piece was featured in MOMA's 'Dislocations' exhibition along with other black nationalists like David Hammons. Piper is quoted before doing this work saying, "..do we and our friends really understand each other? Do we really have nothing in common with blacks/whites/gays/workers/the middle class/other women/other men/etc.?" (Walker Art Center). This seems to be what she is trying to get across in this video piece. By having the man talking about all of the incorrect stereotypes, she is enlightening the viewer about how different identities are viewed and accepted differently.

I really like this piece and feel like she did a good job organizing her thoughts into it. The Minimal style room keeps the focus on the television screens, as does the stadium seating and viewing opportunities on all sides of the box. I feel this is important because her point is really what is going on on the screens. I would be very interested in listening to the stereotypes the man breaks down and feel it is a great eye-opener for most of society.

Adrian Piper

Catalysis III
1970

The part of the series I have chosen is the third, and can be seen in the image to the right. This is a black and white still from the performance, where she dressed modestly and rode a bus in New York with a towel stuffed in her mouth to the point where her cheeks looked like a chipmunk preparing for winter. She also rode the subway and the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building in this section of the performance. The image taken shows Piper on the far right of the screen looking toward the front of the bus. She is sitting sideways and there is a woman in a front-facing seat right beside her, the central person in the image. In front of her, we can see only a fraction of a man who appears to be looking at Piper.

Another performance piece, the Catalysis series also deals with gender and identity. Throughout the entire performance she makes herself over into an "odd or repulsive person and went out in public to experience the frequently disdainful responses of others" (Stakenas & Zurkow 1). In another part of the series she went out during rush hour smelling like spoiled vinegar, eggs, milk and liver. While she already deals with the hardships of being an African-American woman during the 70s, she is pushing societal acceptance even further.

Again, our culture has become so diverse that issues of feminism and racism are not as frequent as they have been in our history, so seeing this piece at first glance I don't take into consideration the fact that she is an African-American woman. The fact that she has a towel stuffed in her mouth to the point that she must be gagging catches my eye. If I saw her on a bus like this today, I would probably think there was something mentally wrong with her, or she had some sort of illness or disease. Back in 1970 however, I could see the issues of her identity. She may be stuffing her mouth to show how little influence she has in society as a black woman. With this act though she is getting more attention it seems. In the image, it looks as if a man is looking at her, and probably a lot more people throughout the performance did so too.

Adrian Piper

I Am the Locus #2 of 5
1975

African-American artist Adrian Piper is most often referred to as a conceptual performance artist. The black and white image to the left is a still from a performance Piper created in the mid-70s that deals with gender and identity. In the piece Piper, a black female, dresses up as a male. She puts white make-up all over her skin, draws on a mustache, and wears a black afro as well as sunglasses as she walks down a crowded street. Walking toward the viewer with a hand to her mouth holding what seems to be a cigarette, one would fully believe the character she is portraying. No one in the image is looking at her which leads us to believe she successfully played her role of a third world boy. In the image she has created a white fog-like substance around her entire body and expanding toward the top of the piece. She writes 'Surrounded and Constrained' in rough black writing with all uppercase letters.

Adrian talks about the performance as a scary experience. She is quoted, "The early street works were very important and even frightening experiences...I always felt threatened, I mean a policeman could have arrested me for disturbing the peace" (Archer 123). She goes on to explain that this change in identity made her a stronger person and she felt more flexible in the end. For this performance specifically she focuses on the idea of being anonymous, fully questioning any type of identity and drastically changing her own by creating what she calls a "mythic being". She is both 'hostile and removed' from the people she encounters on the street. The writing on image refers to the idea that she is surrounded by a number of people, yet constrained by this identity she has created.

For me the piece doesn't seem to be as strong as she may have been hoping to create. While the idea of creating a sort of alter-ego and walking down a crowded street would seem to make a point about identity, it is useless unless the viewer knows of her true identity. Without this prior knowledge, the viewer may not know what the text is referring to. I see a light-skinned male from a different country walking down a crowded United States street. I feel that he is surrounded by so much opportunity but yet he feels constrained by his identity. If I were a person walking down the street when she did this performance, I don't think it would have any effect on me. Our culture has become so diverse that it wouldn't seem out of the ordinary, but the year the piece was performed really has an impact on the way people view it.