FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
The art of offending
Political notoriety and pure art go hand in hand for Karen Finley
By Lori MontgomeryThe American Chestnut
Karen Finley
OYR's High Performance Rodeo
January 8 - 11When Michael Green, curator of OYR's High Performance Rodeo, speaks of Karen Finley, he does so in glowing terms.
"Ever since I've been doing performance art in gallery settings - since high school, really - I've known who Karen Finley was," he says. "When I invited her to the festival a couple of years ago and she played to 900 people wearing nothing but a microphone on the Jack Singer Concert Hall stage, to me, in many ways, the Rodeo had arrived...."
Green speaks of the contrast between the "grotty little garages" where he once saw Finley perform, and The Lincoln Centre, where she performed in 1992, but Finley herself downplays the difference.
"That's never really been a consideration for me," she says. "I was always doing art spaces - I come from a visual background - and when I did go and do bars, to me, those have an equal amount of beauty and importance as The Lincoln Centre.... There's lots of different complications in different stages of your life," she says, but concedes that, "it feels very good when my work is recognized."
Recognition is the least of her worries at this point. The New York-based performance artist is perhaps the highest-profile of the fabled "NEA Four," whose National Endowment for the Arts funding was yanked when Jesse Helms called their work indecent. A couple of lawsuits later, the four had their grants reinstated and the courts called the decency requirement of NEA funding unconstitutional. But successive administrations have appealed and Finley is currently facing Bill Clinton's minions at the Supreme Court - a fact which the artist seems rather proud of.
"I'm going to the Supreme Court, so obviously my work has edge to it," she says. Later, in response to a question about how important politics are in her work, she adds, "I don't think I'd be at the Supreme Court if that weren't so. My work is at the forefront of political discussion by presidents."
Nonetheless, she wishes her work was evaluated purely for its value as art.
"I'd like for it just to be looked at for its artistic merit, but that's not the case," she says. "I think that hasn' t been the case for any artist really, if you're a female or an artist of color or a gay or lesbian artist - you're going to be entering the arena of politics."
While accepting that fact, Finley rejects the assertion of one reviewer that her work springs largely from feminist rage.
"I think that's just something that's usually used for women, because they can't possibly be talented or conscious," she says. "The piece took me two years to create and it's really not about rage. It's about conscious kinds of decisions about how to survive."
In fact, the piece is billed as a "wickedly funny" examination of unattainable domesticity, casting Finley as "the anti-Martha," parodying the famous doyenne of do-it-yourself. But that's not what Finley herself picks out to discuss.
"I think what's most interesting in the piece, in fact... is that you see the struggles in the piece," she says. "Like, I read from the script - I do that purposely. I purposely want to kind of fuck up the whole notion of traditional ideas of theatre, of what makes a good show."
Trappings like memorizing lines, staying in character and maintaining a barrier between the performer and audience are not what Finley considers the staples of good theatre.
"I find that disingenuous in terms of real life," she says. "And that's probably the thing that confuses critics the most."
The essence of good theatre, Finley says, is simple. "(It's) the genuine impulse, which is really the same thing that's important in all art. Extraordinary focus, a moment of something that you just see it and you know it, and it isn't about mastering the craft," she says. "Mastering the craft everyone can do, but going and being there with an emotional element, with an intellectual guidance, is what makes the art happen."
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