Art and Women's Performance

international | arts and media | opinion/analysis

Friday February 15, 2008 17:21

by C Murray

and activism too...

Many women artists have given time to their art and neglected their art to continue
their passionate dialogues with contemporary culture. This small piece is about
some contemporary activist women, in literacy, anti-war, against oppression;
and surviving regimes that find 'art' to be at variance with their ideologies.

Seagrave at work..

Broken YouTube video link removed -Ed

The video link is of Glenda Cimino, a member of IAWM, who, as well as an author and a member
of many groups opposed to War. She produces films and has written one book, called
'Cicada'.(poetry)

Ann Seagrave , who now lives in BCN is a performance artist who works in live art
which uses image, tech and poetry as the basis of her expression. She lived and
performed in Dublin for many years, moving to Ulster and BCN after that.

One of her pieces is entitled 'She Grows her Own Standing' and I was lucky enough
to see the performance at the Hugh Lane during a collaborative show:

'Experiments suceeded in making salt water shine,
By adding her to the liquour of a dozen pickled herrings,
But the roughest treatment causes her to glow more brightly,
So she plants her feet, digs in her heels and grows her own
standing.

In the mild evening air with her body entirely luminous,
Surrounded by a vapour which readily takes fire,
'Others can see their hands from the light shining from her,
When she plants her feet, digs in her heels , and grows her own
standing.'

The show was based in a residency in the Botanic Gardens and Ann
used images of phosphoresence in a canopied tent, with the names
of plants embroidered into the canvas to indicate her grandmother's passion to
read; and how she learned her words from co-op medicine bottles.

Liliana Ursu, is a Romanian poet who survived the Ceaucescu regime,
both Tess Gallagher and Andrew Sorkin were her translators, Sorkin detailed
how poetic collaboration was frowned upon and how meetings had to take place
in big boardrooms beneath the dictator's visage.

I put a review of Ursu on Poetry Ireland, the sense of fear that pervades
the poem of 'The Sky Behind the Forest' is known, has been known by many
women- who despite that dread, be they in Palestine or the US continue to
write and produce images.

http://www.poetryireland.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=406
http://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/book-reviews/r....html

Agnes Nemes Nagy was silenced by the State, she was a Magyar writer
whose collaboration with Hugh Maxton* produced the book :- 'Between'.

The images are truly frightening, especially her angels and entities.

The Night of Akhenaton' is featured in the collection, which has a cyclic piece
entitled 'Terraced Landscape' based in 34 planes or levels of being,
the whole poem should be read as an exemplar of modern verse and image that
completely defied the odds of the repression of the artist who saw her job increasingly as:-
'The duty of the poet to obtain citizenship for an increasing horde of nameless emotions'.

Ann Seagrave links;- http://www.newmoves.co.uk/annseagrave-2.aspx
Glenda Cimino:- http://www.irishwriters-online.com/glendacimino.html

Hugh Maxton is an Irish Writer and Poet. his collaboration with Nagy was based
in translation, which was highly skillful, given some of the bad translations of her
work that have appeared on the net.