Mining the Past to Change the Future (2017)
Staging Politics: Allegory vs. Satire (2017)
My Lai Revisited: One Man’s Journey (2018)
1984 in 2016: Big Brother is Watching
Slouching Towards the Next Millennium: Some Meditations on Art and the Twenty-First Century (1989)
The Voices of America 1992 (1992)
Commentary Intermedia: A Bright Tomorrow? (1987/89)
Resurrecting the Disappeared: Recollections on Artists in Absentia (1997)
Commerce on the Edge: The Convergence of Art and Entertainment (1986)
Performance Art is Dead: Long Live Performance Art! (1994)
Notes on Performance and Sex(ism) (2015)
Commentary Intermedia: Interdisciplinary Performance: Collaboration in the 1980s (1985)
Politics, Performance, and the Los Angeles Festival (1991)
Radiodeath: The Expulsion of Art from the Airwaves (1995)
The Artist as Fundamentalist (1992)
A Question of Civic and Public Responsibility (1994)
Beauty and the (Art) Beast (1993)
Miwa Matreyek’s Self-Made World (2014)
Laurie Anderson’s Dirtday! (2012)
Cynthia Hopkins: This Clement World (2013)
Meredith Monk: On Behalf of Nature (2013)
AFTERWORD: A Retrospective View
From the very beginning of this project I was thinking about who would be the perfect editor to collaborate with. Thus a very special thank you to Intellect editor Jelena Stanovnik for giving me the opportunity to choose that person myself. It was my even greater good fortune that Marina La Palma said “Yes!” without a moment’s hesitation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to her for her extraordinary knowledge and intellect, her keen insights and historical overview, her passion for the subject matter, her skillful guidance, her generosity, and her wit. The care and thoughtfulness she has given to the process of editing this book has been invaluable. Not only has she been a dedicated collaborator and brilliant editor throughout, but a joy and an inspiration to work with.
I dedicate this book in memoriam to my dear friend Rachel Rosenthal whose life and work and values — her commitment to excellence, and her willingness to take on the truly big issues — have been my inspiration from the very beginning of our friendship when I moved to Los Angeles from New York City in 1981. She was a brilliant artist, writer, performer, and teacher who did not shy away from controversy, and spoke from her heart and mind. She was powerful and she was also funny. She was my soul mother. Her courage, integrity, intelligence, passion, wit, and honesty are all in the image that graces the cover of this book. It speaks for me and for my writing over the four decades represented in this collection. Thank you Rachel for being you, and for being there for me. I miss you every day and honor your memory with gratitude.
Thank you to Linda Burnham for founding High Performance magazine as a forum for performance art and cultural politics and carrying on its editorial mission with courage and integrity. Much appreciation to my editor Steve Durland for providing me with the opportunity to write critical issue-based features, many of which are the heart and soul of this book. Thank you for your maverick spirit and wry sense of humor, for your encouragement and support, for urging me to take on controversial subject matter and write in my own voice, and in so doing making me a stronger writer. I am grateful for my years as a contributing editor/writer (1983–95) and Media Arts Editor (1993–95) and the privilege of having been a part of a groundbreaking publication that facilitated a dynamic discourse for its community of artists and writers.
Much appreciation and many thanks to the late Joan Hugo, the southern California editor for Artweek, and a dear friend. I had barely been in LA for a month when Joan recruited (more like arm-twisted!) me into writing
