Mixing Art and Life: The Conundrum of the Avant-Garde's Autonomous Status in the Performance Art World of Los

Angeles Author(s): Jacqualine Pagani Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 175-203 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Midwest Sociological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4120746 . Accessed: 17/05/2011 14:54
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MIXING ARTAND LIFE: TheConundrum the Avant-Garde's AutonomousStatus of in the Performance Worldof LosAngeles Art
Jacqualine Pagani

of University SouthernIndiana
art Performance the quintessential art, avant-garde form, flourishedand gained cennationalrenownin Los Angelesduring last threedecadesof the twentieth the art withinthe performance world tury.In 1989,however, pivotalchangesoccurred Endowandin the national in attitude toward as seen in upheavals the National art, ment for the Arts,that drastically alterednot only the formand contentof perforavantmanceart but also its meansof production its statusas an autonomous and art of artworld. historical An of the transformation thisperformance garde analysis
world from the mid-1970sto its manifestation in the 1990s is presented by analyzing ethnographicand archivaldata and by noting the circumstancesaffecting the auton-

socialandcultural to omyof thisartworldandits relationship external spheres.

Minerva'sowl only begins its flight as dusk emerges. G. W. E Hegel, Philosophy of Law

G. W. E Hegel's comment about Minerva'sowl refers to a requisite condition for the historical analysis of a period:that it must be drawingto a close. Karl Marx,too, claimed that the perception or validity of any category and its social function is developed through historical analysis, particularly at times of radical separation from preceding epochs (Schulte-Sasse [1984] 1996). As the decade of the 1990s came to an end, so too did a once-vital art scene and community of performanceartists in Los Angeles that had gained national renown and been the focus of incredible public fervor for a few years.In the last decade of the twentieth century,performance art abandoned its status as the quintessential avant-gardeart medium in yet another attempt by an art world to efface the categorical boundaries separating"art"from the praxis of everyday life. In the process, however, performance art became stagnant and institutionalized and dissolved its autonomous status as an art world-a status determined by the social relations, activities, and intentions within a community of artists,by how they are regarded by external social worlds,and by the relationship between the two social spheres. In this article two distinct periods of performanceart in Los Angeles are analyzed by showing shifts in the conception and practice of autonomy by the artists as they
Direct all correspondenceto JacqualinePagani,Dept. of Sociology,Univ.of SouthernIndiana.8600 University Blvd, Evansville, IN 47712-3596;e-mail:jpagani@usi.edu The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 42, Number 2, pages 175-203. Copyright ? 2001 by The Midwest Sociological Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. ISSN: 0038-0253

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responded to macrolevel forces, particularly to the cultural, political, and economic forces associated with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). I use Peter Btirger's ([1984] 1996) concept of autonomy for avant-garde art worlds as a point of departure. As he applies it to the avant-gardethrough the mid-twentieth century,the concept has two basic components: how the avant-gardeis linked to art institutions that have been separated from the praxis of, or are autonomous in, bourgeois society and how this status mediates and affects the public's response to avant-gardework. Btirger pessimistically assumes that the avant-garde'sintent to reintegrate art into life praxis is impossible unless it overcomes its autonomous status (Schulte-Sasse [1984] 1996).The recent eras of Los Angeles performance art illustrate that his view was justified in one period and that, in the other, the artists believed they had overcome the challenge of autonomy faced by their predecessors. In both cases, the processes of art mediation changed in ways unforeseen by Btirger. Because the focus on this art world's autonomous status is primarilyrelated to a governmentagency,or publicfundingagency,these cases also illustratesome of the difficulties and unexpected outcomes associated with state cultural policy making. Furthermore, they show an ongoing variation in approaches to the enduring issues of cultural policy making,such as defining what art is or deciding whose culture gets recognition and support, who is in a position to decide such matters,and whose interests are being served (e.g., Williams 1977; Mulcahy 1985; Dubin 1986; Clifford 1988; Calhoun 1989; Cummings 1991;Buchwalter 1992;Crane 1992;DiMaggio 1992;Gilmore 1993;Levine 1993; McGuigan 1996), or evaluating how cultural policy-makingis influenced or constrained by political and economic forces (e.g., Balfe and Wyszomirski 1985; Benedict 1991; DiMaggio 1991;Cunningham1992;Balfe 1993;McGuigan 1996). In general, both periods demonstrate that a top-down, cause-and-effect scenario of a government agency's actions dictating or predicting an outcome in an art world can be complicated by the decisions and actions of the artists.Also, from the perspective of the artists,during the first period discussed (1970s-1980s), the conditions permitted under the NEA were favorable for fringe art production and for the artists,who advocated diversity in aesthetics, and democracy and culturalpluralismin their social relations.In the 1990s,when the agency came under conservative scrutiny,the emphasis in art making shifted from the artists themselves to a focus on social service and audience expectations based on ethnic, racial,lifestyle, or gender affiliations. Finally, related to the conundrum faced by avant-garde and other fringe artists of making their work socially relevant while retaining conditions conducive to art production and legitimacy as an art world are questions posed by Carol Becker (1994, p. xv), who asks:"What is the responsibility of the artist to society? What is the responsibility of the society to the artist? ... What is the role of artists within democratic societies?" In general, in the 1990s the first and last question permeated funding issues, and agencies then expected specific,community-service-orientedresponses.The type of performance art that came to dominate at that time was geared toward meeting the service mandates. Hence, if artists met their civic obligations, they could expect support. In the earlier period, artists were more likely to respond to the first and third questions with less practical and more idealistic answers focused on esoteric issues of society's need to be challenged through art and, as one performance artist states, "to create art that does not serve democracy or government or to advance any social/political causes embraced by its members other than the artist him/herself and thereby demonstrate the true freedom

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the artist enjoys in the democratic society." In this case, then, agencies and artists assumed that artists deserved support without social or political strings attached,so they might freely challenge societal perspectives. In both periods, performance artists struggled with issues of autonomy, which included making viable art meeting either their or someone else's expectations, even as the very praxis of autonomy was reconfigured,in part, by macrolevel forces. Following the methods section, I present a discussion of the basic issues of autonomy and then a history of the two periods of performance art, showing how external forces and internal decisions affect autonomy and, consequently, support systems, aesthetics, and perceptions and practices regardingsocial relations. METHOD My investigation into the performance art world began with a general inquiry into what elements influence artists'aesthetic or artistic decisions and, hence, what qualities determine "good" or "bad"performance art. In the course of two intensive periods of data collection-the latter half of 1993 and from January1996 to May 1997-a definable split within the art world became obvious.The two factions are chronologically distinguished between artists who actively participated in performance art in Los Angeles sometime during the two decades prior to 1990, and artists whose works have been deemed valid since then. Two venues dominate and embody the praxis of the performance art world for each period-Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) for the 1970s and 1980s and Highways at the 18th Street Art Complex in Santa Monica for the 1990sand are key focal points for evaluating the transformationof this art world.Both venues were forthcoming in giving me access to their archives and the opportunity to interact with their staff. Data for this project also come from thirty-five semistructuredinterviews and ongoing informal conversations with performance art world participants,1 from numerous published interviews in journals,newspapers,and magazines,and from participantobservation through volunteer work for performances. The majorityof the participantsincluded in this study have experience that spans the two periods;a minority have been active only since 1989-1990.Among the participants who have been involved in both periods are those whose careers faired well during the earlier decades and who then had to change artistic careers given the praxis of performance art in the 1990s. Among those who still had access to resources in the latter period are those who were displeased with the system of validation among critics in the press media and in art policies covering grants, even if the system worked to their benefit. The artists whose careers began prior to 1989 vary greatly in their art background and training,the art media they favor, their thematic material, their degree of collaboration, and how actively they sought resources for creating and disseminating their works. For the post-1989 generation of artists whose work conforms to the 1990s agenda, however, their aesthetic choices are more uniform:usually text-laden, theatrical in style, favoring autobiographicalcontent with solipsistic themes, and mostly solo performances. The more recent generation has also been highly dependent on a touring circuit of colleges and universitiesfor furtheringtheir careers,whereas the earlier generation often worked in a network of alternative theaters and in an active home-based scene including lofts, warehouses, and nontheatrical settings.The artists' age range varies widely in both groups, but most of them got involved in performance art while in

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their late teens through early thirties and, in this sample, many have remained artistically active into their forties, fifties, and sixties. The ethnicity,gender, and lifestyles of the participants vary widely in both groups. Such social classification emphases were stressed and recorded to a greater degree in the later period, although participants report that peer support of artists from marginalizedgroups was germane to the spirit of performance art from its early days in Los Angeles. AUTONOMY:THECONUNDRUM OF THEAVANT-GARDE My intent in this section is to recall a few salient points that will acquaint the noninitiate to this art category, which exists primarily on the fringes of mainstream art worlds or major performing venues and large institutions of art and is currently enjoying little popular attention; I do not intend to present a detailed history of the avant-garde and performance art.2 Prior to the 1990s, performance art traced its history through the avant-gardeart movement that began in 1909 with a group of artists called the futurists in Europe and that later included the experimental theater of the Russian Revolution, dada, surrealism,the aleatory works of musicianJohn Cage and dancer Merce Cunningham, and Happenings,among others (Crane 1987;Goldberg 1988;Stern and Henderson 1993; Carlson 1996). To accommodate aesthetic choices characteristicof performance art of the 1990s,its history has been expanded to include a Euroamericanfocus on the visual and aural impact of many types of performance-for example, music, tumbling, mime, parades,juggling, cabaret, and stand-up comedy (Carlson 1996). Although a history of performance art traced through its avant-garde connections may not fully explain all performance art, especially after 1990,it goes far toward explaining the practices of the first decades of this study and in illustratingthe aesthetic and functional variations in performanceart in the 1990s. The history of the avant-gardeis one of revolt and experimentation primarilyin the various theater art traditions.Futurists and their generations of followers wrote manifestos describingtheir objections to various practices and ideas found in mainstreamart institutions and pushed the aesthetic limits of the established order (Crane 1987;Goldberg 1988). According to Diane Crane (1987, p. 14), an avant-garde art movement is classified as such by art world participantsif it redefines at least one aspect or makes changes in (1) the aesthetic content of art, (2) the social content of art, or (3) the means of production and distribution of art. She further states that art movements that redefine aesthetic content are more likely to be labeled avant-garde than movements dealing primarilywith social content and means of production (p. 15). The term "performance art" came into popular use in the 1970s.According to Marvin Carlson (1996, pp.100-101) performance art of this decade resembled its futurist and dadaist predecessors through its interest in "developing the expressive qualities of the body,especially in opposition to logical and discursive thought and speech, and in seeking the celebration of form and process over content and product ... The major foundations for the performance work in New York and California in the 1970s,however, came primarilynot out of experimental theatre work, but out of new approaches to visual arts (such as environments, happenings,live and conceptual art), and to dance."Performance art evolved as artists challenged traditional categories of art media by combining media or dissolving media boundaries in novel ways. For example, artists of static art (painting, sculpture, poetry) might add a performative element-dance, music, human or animal bodies-to

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enhance the work. Performance art became a convenient term for classifying the unclassifiable melange or for unusual works executed as a performance, rather than simply as an exhibit. Performance art eventually came into its own as a quintessential avant-gardeart form. Not unlike avant-garde artists in each of the movements of the twentieth century, performance artists function in a social network that is marginal to mainstream art worlds-at least at the onset of a movementbefore it is co-opted by largerart institutionsand their works almost always contains an element of criticism reflecting the current movement's antiestablishmentor antitraditionalattitudes.The object of criticismvaries during different eras, but the art usually focuses on cultural or political attitudes and practices either within the institution of art or in larger culturaland political arenas.This critical character of avant-garde art is often regarded by art world participantsand by those peripherally involved as its most crucial feature because its use value is a means for critiquingthe status quo. Using a distinction devised by Simon Frith and Jon Savage (1993, p. 115), avant-garde art has a role in the culture of dissatisfaction,which they describe in the following: Fromthe dissatisfaction has always to be thatlife couldbe difpositionthe argument couldbe better,couldbe changed-both artandeducation on theseprerest ferent, to aremeantto makeus see thingsdifferently. aredesigned showus mises; they They to of throughthe imagination, throughreason,the limitations our perspectives, doubtourcommon sense. Biurger([1984] 1996) uses Marxist concepts to explain the discontent that motivates the avant-garde. With the emergence of the industrialage and the rise of bourgeois society, art was released from its rational and purposeful functions as employed by churches and the aristocracy.For the most part, under bourgeois patronage, art has been construed as a subsystem, an institution functioning autonomously from economic and political characterof the bourgeoisie.This concept is succinctly stated by JtirgenHabermas (quoted in Btirger [1984] 1996,p. 24): the Autonomous only establishes art itself as bourgeois societydevelops, economic and politicalsystemsbecomedetachedfromthe cultural one, and the traditionalist worldpictures whichhavebeen undermined the basisideologyof fair exchange by releasethe artsfromtheirritualuse. In other words, art as an institution has been tacitly released from demands that it be socially useful; art has been bestowed the status of separateness from the praxis of everyday life (Btirger [1984] 1996, pp. 24-25). To this I add that, until the 1970s, the autonomous status of art also freed it from obligations to be self-sustaining and functionally justified in a free market economy (McGuigan 1996,pp. 51-73). The autonomous status of art is not stable nor is its development linear. Btirger explains that when leaders of society co-opt art for political purposes (e.g., fascists regimes) and when they deem artists as threats to the moral or legal fabric of society,art loses it autonomy (Btirger [1984] 1996,p. 25). He further suggests that there is an inherent tension between the content or meaning of individual works and the bourgeoisbestowed autonomous status of art. Not only do leaders of mainstreampolitical or cultural institutions occasionally question art's autonomy, but artists, too, struggle with

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being relegated to a sphere of production that is regarded as useless or lacking in cultural value beyond art world dialectics,because that sphere is removed from the bourgeois concept of quotidian praxis.Consequently,if, for example, an artist or a group of artists does work with a political or social critique in an environment external to the praxis of everyday life, their work may be ineffectual, because the significance of the meaning is minimized. By the end of the nineteenth century,the institution of art had so fully accepted its autonomous status in bourgeois society that the art movement of aestheticism dominated.That is, the focus of the art was on the medium itself; art was made for art's sake, and the institution of art and the meaning in individuals' works merged to support its separateness and ineffectualness in other arenas of society (Btirger [1984] 1996, p. 27). This condition, among others, set the stage for rebellion by the avant-gardistsof the twentieth century.3 The initial efforts of the avant-gardewere not so much to dissolve their autonomous status by integrating the institution of art into bourgeois society, which they viewed as having "bad"praxis,but to establish the institution of art as its own praxis and to integrate the praxis of art into everyday life and to challenge the praxis of bourgeois society (Biirger [1984] 1996, p. 49). In other words, the desire of the avant-gardewas not about achieving a freedom to make works with socially relevant content but to alter the status of the institution that did much in establishing the relevancy or irrelevancy of art.4To illustrate this intention, Btirger ([1984] 1996,p. 50) refers to Herbert Marcuse'sidea that values such as humanity,joy, truth, and solidarity have been extracted from bourgeois society and preserved in art. Art is then used by bourgeois society to project a better image of the order of things than actually exists. Art, then, as an institution, is used to bolster a characterizationof the bourgeoisie as having lofty values because such values are illustratedin their art, even if the values are absent from quotidian life. So the avantgarde challenged the institution of art as an established subsystem of bourgeois society and as an instrumentof the society's disillusions of civilized perfection.The avant-garde probed the given assumptions of the institution of art and created provocative works to illuminate and question the praxes. One example is the work of Marcel Duchamp, who challenged the status of artistic"works"by exhibiting ready made objects,such as a urinal, and then signing "R. Mutt" to the object, which also questions where value is placed:Is the value in the immanent quality of the object or in the artist'ssignature?Is it valued as art because it is exhibited in a museum or are all urinals inherently art? The earliest avant-garde failed in its fundamental intention to change the autonomous status of art.The institution of art resisted the attack of the avant-gardepartly by absorbingthe intellectual critique and its products and rendering them autonomous.As Btirger ([1984] 1996, p. 57) states, "Now that the attack of the historical avant-garde movements on art as an institution has failed, and art has not been integrated into the praxisof life, art as an institutioncontinues to survive as something separate from the praxis of life."However, Btirger claims that the avant-gardewas immediately successful in raising general consciousness of art as an institution and of the inefficacy of individuals' works in that situation.This awareness also catalyzed a plethora of innovation and instigated continued efforts in following generations of the avant-gardeto find ways of dissolving its separatist status to some degree, thereby giving more relevancy to artists' works than that afforded by the bourgeois institution of art. From the onset of the avant-garde's efforts in challenging art's autonomous status, the artists were facing a couple of dilemmas of which they may not have been fully cog-

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nizant and the problems of which were realized in the 1990s.As Btirger states ([1984] 1996, p. 50), "An art no longer distinct from the praxis of life but wholly absorbed in it will lose the capacity to criticize it, along with its distance."Furthermore,whether art loses it autonomous status and becomes more practical or the praxis of life subsumes the bourgeois values of art and the praxis of life becomes more aesthetic, the purpose or function of art becomes even more difficult to determine as its status as a distinct sphere of activity dissolves. In following the logic of the avant-garde's struggle to its conclusion, Biirger raises another conundrum (p. 53). If avant-gardists were to eliminate the boundaries separating art and the praxis of life, then they, too, would dissolve the boundaries separating the producer and recipients. Indeed, the early avant-garde played with this notion, as when a dadaist wrote a recipe for creating a poem for the audience to practice, thus effacing the artist to an extent and turning the audience into producers. But, as Buirgerexplains, if the distinction between producer and recipient is completely effaced, and the art form becomes solely an instrument for living one's life, the result is solipsism, "the retreat to the problems of the isolated subject" (p. 53). Although Biurger does not elaborate on the problem created through solipsism, it seems that such a function for art, free as it may be from its autonomous status, also renders it ineffectual as a mode of collective activity or as a means of giving the activity of art making any kind of consensual significance;moreover art loses its critical distance. Throughout the 1950s, the autonomous model and the avant-garde's relation to it hardly wavered. Even as avant-gardists tried to distinguish their behavior from the lives of their patrons and their work from accepted aesthetic practices, the relationship was one of dependency on the institution of art. Without the art critics to devise new aesthetic theories for artists' innovations, small groups of elite patrons to decide which artists to promote, and museum and performance space curators to present the works, the products of artists' efforts only cluttered their studios (Wolfe 1975;Mulkay and Chaplin 1982; Crane 1987). So, although avant-gardists,as part of the institution of art, were generally perceived as being autonomous in bourgeois society, they were nonetheless dependent on the validation and distribution processes of the mainstream art world. AN IDEAL WINDS OF CHANGE:APPROACHING The social dynamism of the 1960s swept through the avant-garde art world. An art movement with a social consciousness emerged that came into its own from about the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the same time that performance art burgeoned in Los Angeles and gained an international reputation.To a great extent, performance artists were finding solutions to the dilemmas of autonomy:How were artists to deal with the autonomous status epitomized by large art institutions and to efface some of the barriers between themselves and larger social worlds, yet not completely dissolve their collective activity as an art world? Changes within this art world, such as in the participants' perspectives on artistic and social diversity,and changes in its relationship with larger art institutions5and in local and national arts policies prompted an era of vitality and growth in popularity,a high degree of innovation,6and an increased development of social consciousness. I argue that in Los Angeles, the autonomous status of the performance art world increased even as it was cut off from major art institutions.This avant-

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garde art world became further defined as an independent social world functioning with few ties to other social spheres.Yet many of the artists of this time made choices that they believed made their work socially viable to other communities and larger social concerns. Not only did the form and content of the work reflect growing social awareness, as seen in the rise of works by feminists and minorities,but the artists' social relations reflected their goals of overcoming social barriers outside their art world and of supporting a diversity of aesthetics. In other words, the expansive scope of artistic and social diversity and the favorable conditions that permitted self-determination seemed to have solved the dilemmas of autonomy posed by Biirger-the gap between artistic praxis and the life world narrowed while performance art retained its status as a recognizable sphere of collective activity. With their increased dissociation from mainstream art systems and increased support from state agencies, Los Angeles performance and other fringe artists chose to model their social relations on democratic ideals. Moreover, the environment encouraged artists to explore and express personal visions and social consciousness,even through abstruse means, without imposed ties to particular social or political agendas.What follows is a description and explanation of forces affecting the function and motivation of the avant-garde, particularly of Los Angeles performanceart, in the 1970s and 1980s.

Choices Madefromthe Street

Performance artists of the 1970s and 1980s distinguishedthemselves and their work and perpetuated the notion that their activity made them tangentially useful for nonart worlds by presumingthey had unfettered freedom to express themselves and to produce work using whatever means were available,usually in collaboration with friends.One of the vanguard performance artists in Los Angeles, Johanna Went, says that the decade of the 1970s was a time when it was easy just "to follow your nose," live by gut instinct, and be a bohemian.There was a "scene"in the 1970s that she describes "as energy produced by a lot people that feeds itself."The energy "moves you along,"creating a sense of excitement. Initially,she performed at widely popular city festivals or in the street: "[Wewould do shows] just anywhere we could, anyplace where anybody would give us a little bit of money to do something, or if there was some kind of event going on, we'd just go and do a show without permission."Because she and her performancegroup did not have studio space available for rehearsing,they "practiced"their workshops in the street. They used taped music and did "theater games,"which was her way of creating through improvisationaland chance processes. The developing scene coalesced by becoming geographicallycentered in an industrial area of Los Angeles where artists began to transform warehouses into lofts for living, producing art, performing, and exhibiting. In 1986 a local writer suggested that the Alameda industrial district, "filled with abandoned warehouses, old railroad-freight buildings and produce and fish markets" had been transformed into a Soho West (Ruben 1986, p. 12).7In his opinion, "six major blocks from 1st Street to 7th Street, may be the most innovative, creative slice of all downtown. Over the past decade the Alameda district has evolved into one of the city's most vibrant art centers .... [with] as many as 2,000 artists living and working in the area."The low rents (e.g., a fifteenhundred-squarefoot loft for ten cents per square foot) and the laissez-faire attitude of

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fire marshals and building code inspectors afforded artists a centralized area for interaction and creativity. Commercial galleries and restaurants opened in the area, also, making it a lively place for arts attendance. Although many galleries and spaces existed only temporarily to provide an immediate need for a particular group of artists, one space, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), gave stability to the "fringe" art scene, a term used locally to distinguish the art activity of this section of town from the large institutions around the civic center (also known as Bunker Hill) and on the west side of downtown. LACE's purpose and function embodied the characteristics of this art world, defining itself as a model for innovation and democracy.

LACE: Self-Determination Embodying

LACE was an alternative, artist-run space that began, as many venues did in the mid1970s, as a loosely knit group of artists banded together for a particular purpose. In this case, ten artists primarily from the Chicano community were awarded a CETA grant for teaching mural painting to high school students. In less than two years, LACE became a fairly stable exhibition venue devoted to presenting a diversity of artists (e.g., local and out-of-town, experienced and inexperienced, with variations across ethnic and gender boundaries, various media, and differing aesthetic viewpoints (Moss 1988). From the early days of its inception, LACE was committed to artist self-determination, and its organization was structured so as to ensure that LACE existed primarily as a venue supporting artists' needs, which in the opinion of artists working at LACE, was a way of providing a community service. Establishing an internal organizational structure controlled by artists was one of the major challenges of the early years as stated by Marc Pally, one of LACE's directors: It always seemed possible to me that LACE could move forward on two trackscontrol by artists coupled with sound management and fund-raising.This was really the challenge of my years at LACE, helping to develop and implement structures of artist control and participationwhile simultaneously presenting that very fact to potential funders as LACE's greatest strength.(Moss 1988,p. 7) Moreover, because of LACE's goal to meet a broad spectrum of artistic needs, the early founders set a precedent for democratic processes for guiding the internal structure of the organization. As noted in LACE: 10 Years Documented: The thirteen artists then took turns curatingmonthly exhibitions,rotated the responsibility of watching the gallery and made decisions by voting on absolutely everything.According to Sarah Parker,who became LACE's first gallery managerin 1978: "The most impressive part of the original group was this democratic process.We did not have a great deal in common artistically,but we did agree on democracy-it really did work and helped us survive.We were receptive to other people's input and willingness to be open and tried to present new, fresh, egalitarianwork.We tried not to wear blinders or limit ourselves to just fine art. It was an organicprocess that made a messy business-none of us were gallery-oriented-but we somehow managed to get through."(Moss 1988,p. 6-7) Thus, a hallmark feature of LACE until 1998, besides its artistic success in the 1970s and 1980s, had been its democratic, organizational structure designed to serve artists' needs.

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Curating committees for each of LACE's programs (exhibitions, performance, and video) were composed largely of artists from the area who selected works to present and to produce (i.e., they granted space, money, and technical support to artists' projects). Committee members served for a few years during which time they were ineligible to present their work at LACE. The administrators at LACE incorporated a number of other procedures that helped achieve their ideological goals of serving artists, giving a break to untried artists, and supporting work that was judged unsuitable for other venues, such as commercial or university galleries, clubs, and theaters. One committee member states: We wanted to be the place where you couldn't find [another] home for [the work]; that this was the only place that would present it. We were the only ones who would present Karen Finley8 when she was that level, and, of course, after she became famous she could be presented at UCLA (University of California,Los Angeles) or MOCA (Museum of ContemporaryArt). But the Lingerie and all the other clubs were terrifiedof her. Also, we were the only people crazy enough to present Survival Research Laboratory.They were such high-risk, machine performance from San Francisco;it was a demolition derby,punk rock, with three thousand people in a lot downtown with an exploding guillotine. We wanted to do the stuff nobody else had the courage or the insanity to do. We said, "If it can be done somewhere else, let it be done elsewhere; like a very theatricalperformancepiece, maybe it should be done in theaters.(Interview,1996) Primary among their curating procedures was a conscientious effort to diversify programming and to feature artists of different ethnicities and gender, local and out-oftown artists, and those with various levels of experience. One performance coordinator reports: When I was working there, we'd get a lot of proposals and it was like this joke, like, 70 percent of the proposals we got were from New York and they were by white men and then there were about 5 percent women and 3 percent ethnic minorities because the white men really knew how to get it out-the video tape and the press and whatever [to promote themselves]. And we had to shake trees to get work by women, by Latinas,whatever.We had to go out into the communityin L.A. and say,"Please send us a videotape."Otherwise,if we had based our programmingon what we received, it would have been all white men. So we really had to make an effort and we did. We had to swing it and it was always conscious.We said, "These people need to be represented; this is their opportunity." (Interview,1996) So LACE provided a foundation for the fringe art scene of Los Angeles and maintained its grassroots, populist character among artists, thus fostering innovations and attracting large audiences and media attention to the downtown happenings. The fringe art scene, performance art included, thrived on their autonomy from the bourgeois art institutions and concurrently enjoyed their special status as an avant-garde art world. In this case, autonomy was empowering, and the fringe art world participants perceived themselves as quite connected to everyday life-albeit antiestablishment-in that their embodied idealized freedoms of collective, heterogeneous social interaction practice and activity.

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Content, Form,and Context

Under these conditions,there was less tension between the content of individual works and the environment in which works were produced. If an artist of this scene wished to present a socially relevant theme or take their art and activism to the streets, the artists perceived that their work had a greater effect on the nonart world than it might have had a couple of decades earlier when it had to rely on the filteringsystem of mainstream art institutions.Such art reflected the broader culture of dissatisfactionthat had gained a prominent voice and visibility beginning in the 1960s. Indeed, performance art and other fringe art media added theatrical elements to social and political demonstrations (Lippard 1984). Not all fringe artists,however, chose to focus on popular social or political issues. Some continued to explore the development of form and to experiment with art media as the primary conveyor of meaning. In performance art, at least, such concentration on media was always imbued with a meaning that may not have been easily identifiable.As artists challenged perceptions through the manipulation of form, they also attempted to convey messages that they believed had significancefor others. Consider the case of JohannaWent, whose work represents some of the most visually and aurally outlandish types of performance art. Her emphasis was not on a tangible product or specific experience but on the process of creation, particularlythe effect of chance interactions among her small group of performers,live music and the audience. so She says that her work is not about anything,that it is produced in "dreamtime," she makes no effort to coordinate the performance and rock music; the elements simply exist in the same time and space, and the result is spontaneous. In other words, she attaches no intellectual theme nor aims for a specific outcome; she works with a detached interest in what happens when a few elements chaotically collide. Not all elements in Went's performances are left to on-the-spot improvisation. She puts a great deal of effort into producing the performance objects with which she and the audience interact, but just what happens in the actual performance is improvised. During a performance, Went inundates audience members with an outrageous orgy of images, sounds, and sensations. She creates fantastic costumes that are frequently changed during a show (e.g., a body-sized head with three unrelated-looking eyes, vaginas, dog heads, and Day of the Dead skeleton faces). The audience also deals with piercing, pounding sound from a live accompanying band, having many of the props thrown at them from the stage, and Went's occasional incoherent babblings and shrieks with a voice described as "a million Chatty Cathy dolls on acid" (Carr 1987). The same reviewer described some elements of Went's show as follows: Thistimeshe emerged as a two-headed witha longgreensnakeattached to first nun her crotch. fromtheirjumpBehindher,two womenin bluewigs,big dildoshanging was witha largesatanic suits,cavorted though, bunny.... Thebiggestcrowd-pleaser, Went'sgiantcunt headdress, whichshe squeezedas whiteliquidgushedfrom her made mouth.... As it ended,the threeperformers into collapsed thegiantmessthey'd of the stage,coveredwithfakebloodandshit.They'd or drunk "blood" let it rainon and themfromthe eyesof one of the greenghouls. the carried bigtampon turd They'd likeritual witha babydoll'shead. chicken overa plucked objects. They'd fought Certainly Went's work may not have had broad appeal and may have been outright repulsive to some people, but she was part of an era in which outrageousness of expres-

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sion against the status quo, experimentation in and exploration of unconventionality, and the multiple dimensions of humanity had a strong place in the cultural landscape (Habermas 1989). Went and the other performance artist respondents performed their works in a variety of settings and venues, but presenting their work at LACE-and all the artists interviewed had performed at LACE-added another dimension because of the funding, facility, and technical support often unavailable elsewhere. That such an organization autonomous subculturalscene not only existed but thrived embodying a self-determining, the question of what made LACE economically viable.The answer lies partly in a begs fundamental shift in the structure of U.S. arts funding beginning in the 1960s with the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and in the assumptions about the place of art in society as reflected in public policies on art.

a Forging CulturalPolicyfor the Government

Although U.S. politicians have over the centuries usually expressed great reticence in government patronage of the arts, a few rhetorical arguments gained enough salience in the 1950s and 1960s to make possible the establishment of the NEA and its cultural policies (Larson 1985), which, in turn, greatly affected nontraditional art worlds.These argumentsreflect certain underlyingvalues about art as either a public good (serving the social interest of the polity) or a merit good (having intrinsic value worth supporting) (Buchwalter 1992;Balfe 1993).The more viable argumentsfor creating political support promote the idea that art is a public good, as reflected in U.S. art and culturalpolicies of the 1950s and 1960s.At that time, art became a tool of the cold war in a fight of symbolic representation;enough politicians were convinced by art advocates that by exporting America's finest art works and art troupes abroad they could fight the communists'accusations that Americans were an uncultured,barbaricpeople (Larson 1985). During this period, then, state support of art was a matter of "national prestige" (McGuigan 1996). When Lyndon Johnson signed the NEA into law, he stated: "Those nations which created no lasting works of art are reduced today to short footnotes in history'scatalogue. Art is a nation's most precious heritage,for it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and to others the inner vision which binds us as a nation" (Arian 1992, p. 63). So for a time, the United States viewed the arts as a possible representationof the superiority of their economic and political systems-a perspective not unlike the attitude of the bourgeoisie in their advocacy of art support at the level of private funding. Although the cold war and global interests propelled the formation of an official arts agency, the NEA, the ideological role and the infrastructureof the agency were determined with sensitivity to domestic popular approval and to past problems with, and ongoing criticisms of government involvement in art and cultural funding (Larson 1985). The NEA's general attitude toward its role in supporting the arts was similar to government agencies supportingscience-that is, its involvement was to be limited and indirect, and aesthetic decisions were to be made primarilyby those proficient in the various artistic disciplines (Mulcahy 1985). As Gary Larson (quoted in Mulcahy 1985, p. 318) states, the federal government intended to maintain an "arms-lengthsupport system" and to avoid policies that might appear as "state-imposedculture that had little to do with America's laissez-faire tradition."Another cold war factor affecting the government's avoidance of direct political involvement in NEA decisions arose from the gov-

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ernment's wish to avoid the practices of its communist counterparts who controlled almost all aspects of culturalproduction and dissemination (Ross 1989).9 In addition, the new arts agency was committed to culturaldemocracy.The first NEA chair, Roger Stevens, told Congress that the purpose of the agency was "to increase opportunities for an appreciation and enjoyment of the arts through wider distribution, to sustain and encourage individual performers and creative artists,to increase the participation of the people in local artistic programs,and to provide the people with new opportunities in all aspects of the arts" (Arian 1992, p. 63). As Kevin Mulcahy (1985, p. 317) explains,the NEA used a "broaddefinition of the arts to include as many diverse cultures and art forms as possible and as wide a distributionof public funds as possible." The agency's sensitivity to numerous constituencies is reflected in a number of administrative and policy decisions and is the primary reason it flourished for many years.As Mulcahy states,the early success of the agency in drawingbipartisansupport was due to decisions such as avoiding "overly specific formulations of policy goals" (p. 330), supporting a wide range of artistic activities,building arts advocacy through the establishment of state art agencies,generating greater involvement from private benefactors,and encouraging political activity in arts communities. The symbolic force and actual outcome of any policy, however, especially when it concerns political stakes and realms of culture, are almost constantly challenged and foster unexpected results (Cunningham1992). NEA policies have been no exception, as noted by EdwardW.Arian (1992) who discusses the dissatisfactionof some community arts groups that believed the NEA distributions were inequitable.10 Yet, to a large degree, during the heyday of the Los Angeles downtown fringe art scene, the agency successfully implemented its ideological stance of maintaining an arms-lengthinvolvement in setting aesthetic directions and of supporting a wide range of diverse art and cultural expression. So for a time, for at least the advocates of government support of the arts, there was little, if any, contradiction in the NEA's funding of a marginal arts organization featuring works that defied easy categorization or that lacked appeal to mainstreamart audiences. Indeed, NEA funding was crucial to the operation of LACE. In keeping with its policy of not underwritingall the operational costs of any arts organization,the NEA provided only a portion of LACE's funding, but all the categories taken together that received NEA funding was considerableover the years,rangingfrom one to nine funded categories in 1979-1990,representing42 percent to 80 percent of LACE's annualfunding from grant sources. (Table 1). As mentioned earlier,NEA funds accountedfor only a portion of the financialneed of arts organization(only 15 percent of the nation's arts organizations'operatingcosts were provided by all sources of public fundingin the 1980s) but the financialsignificanceof this money for small organizationswas more crucial than for large arts institutionsthat have enjoyed an almost constant support of private patronage (Mulcahy 1985). Furthermore, accordingto Mulcahy (1985, p. 336), the importanceof the NEA to organizationssuch as LACE is noted in three qualitativecontributionsthat are also reflectedin the operation of LACE: NEA support of small and new organizationsoffers a mark of official approval that encourages foundation, corporation, and private donations; the funds permit arts organizationsto take their offerings to places and audiences not usually in attendance at standardvenues and galleries;the agency has diligentlypromoted a policy of social access

188 TABLE 1.

THESOCIOLOGICAL Vol. QUARTERLY 42/No. 2/2001 NEA FUNDING TO LACE

Fiscal Year 1989-90

% Totala 42

NEA$b 103,000

# Categ.c 6

% Nonstaticd 45

1988-89
1987-88 1986-87 1985-86 1984-85 1983-84 1982-83 1981-82 1980-81

53
56 49 56 61 80 71 68 57

114,600
88,050 117,450 99,900 162,200 88,750 39,000 22,970 20,350

9
6 8 7 7 6 3 3 2

27
32 35 34 22 23 ND ND ND

1979-80
a

57

1,875

ND

Percentage of NEA fundingout of all grantrevenues includinggovernment,foundation and corporatesources and excludingearned income from ticket sales, individualcontributions,and fund raising. bAmount of NEA money for all funded categories. cNumber of NEA categories for which LACE received funding (e.g., visual artists organization, interarts [programinitiative, presenting],etc.). dPercentage of NEA funding to LACE designated for performingart media.

through outreach to artists and audiences from socioeconomic and ethnic segments of society not usuallyfound in traditionalart-consuming segments." In general, then, the culturalpolicy promoted by the NEA had no small effect in providing needed financialand ideological support for LACE and in recognizing the autonomy of artists and arts organizations.Such a cultural environment allowed the avantgarde to flourishas an autonomous culturalsphere,free from the dictates of mainstream art institutions and able to identify and integrate with social democratic movements. Thus,for this period, Carol Becker's (1994) questions about the social significanceof art as posed in the introduction, are answered in part by examining the relationship between the NEA and LACE. The policies of the NEA and its support of LACE and other small or avant-garde organizations reflect an attitude of tolerance and of some acceptance of dissenting voices and outlandish experimentation in art. As an officially recognized autonomous art world, performance artists and LACE chose to function accordingto principles of cultural democracyand diversity.While esoteric works of a seemingly personal nature were supported and encouraged, so, too, were those imbued with a broader social consciousness.As a director of LACE states: I believethatLACEis a vitalandirreplaceable of the LosAngelesartscommupart for of dedicated the principles self-determination to nity.It is an artists' organization artists(peopleof color,women,gays and lesbians, artists, particularly marginalized andthosemaking the contentandformof whichis not readily LACE art accessible). hasbeencommitted freedom expression, to of and multiculturalism, thepresentation of workwithout limitations the marketplace beforeit wasin vogueto do the of long so. (Interview, 1991). Thus,these artists perceived their collective responsibility as pushing the content, form, and organizational boundaries of their art world and contributing to the expanding social consciousness of the time.

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By the late 1980s, forces opposed to state support of the arts gained dominance and greatly affected the policies and structure of the NEA. Concurrently,from the Left a cultural critique of the concept of a national culture developed along with an advocacy of regional and community cultural development and, more specifically,of multiculturalism.That the larger social, political, and economic climate posed serious challenges for performanceart and other avant-gardeart worlds was quite evident, but decisions made at the local, or metropolitan level and within these art worlds eventually hastened their demise, or at least so eliminated their autonomous status that little collective activity as an art world now exists. Further consequences have been a severe reduction in the cross-fertilizationof ideas, artists' collaboration, and aesthetic boundaries defining performance art. In fact, prominent performance artists of the 1990s suggested renaming the form because it so little resembled its former incarnation.Performance art of the 1990s retained a semblance of avant-gardethrough its positioning as part of the general culture dissatisfactionand its motivation to challenge certain social concepts and values, but its methods and process of production and an increasinglyhostile external environment eventually dissolved the performanceart scene in Los Angeles. I will briefly review the events of the critical turning point of divisiveness over the NEA and then focus on the responses of the Los Angeles performanceart world,especially on the ways in which this particularart world inadvertently hastened the censoring efforts of the Right and abandoned the social democratic ideals and practices of artist self-determination. Although since the late 1970s the United States has been embroiled in an increasingly pervasive cultural idea where market reasoning and managerialistrhetoric prevail (McGuigan 1996), only the most superficial arguments from the economic perspective have persisted in conservatives' efforts to abolish the NEA. Actually, their economic reasons have been rather spurious.For example, the annual per capita contribution to the NEA was approximatelysixty-eight cents in the late 1980s compared to per capita annual spending of twenty-seven dollars in Germany and thirty-twodollars in France on their institutions of culture (DiMaggio 1991;McGuigan 1996). Also, investments in art have been shown to have a multipliereffect and support of arts development has been a primarymeans for revitalizingurban areas (Whitt and Share 1988). Conservatives have invoked legal argumentsfor either dissolving the agency or for giving congressional lawmakers (preferably of conservative ilk) power to determine what constitutes "good" or "bad"art by imposing content restrictions,specifically in dealing with putative obscene or pornographicwork. Conservatives stated that because the agency is funded through taxes, such arbitration is required (Mulcahy 1992). The conservative viewpoint is concisely presented in the following passage from The Backgrounder,a publication of a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation: TheNEA is an unwarranted into extension the federalgovernment the voluntary of sector.... DespiteEndowment claimsthatits effortsbringart to the innercity,the class. agencyofferslittle more than a directsubsidyto the cultured, upper-middle thanpromoting best in art,the NEA continues offertax dollars to rather the Finally, and the federalseal of approval subsidize to "art" is offensiveto mostAmerithat cans.(Jarvik 1997, 1) p. The legal grounds on which the reauthorization and subsidizing battles have been fought did not, in the final rulings,work in favor of the political and religious conserva-

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tive Right's efforts to instigate restrictions on particular subject matter or viewpoints expressed in NEA funded art (Sullivan 1991). This did not mean, however, that the Right failed to bring about ends that suited their agenda. The campaign of condemnation and terrorizingof artists and arts organizations launched by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) with the supportof Christianrightorganizations'2 induced an atmosphere of fear and self-censorshipwithin the NEA and for most organizations that previously supported fringe art work. Although the restrictionsadvocated by the Right on NEA-funded art violated fundamental constitutional guarantees, the political Right co-opted the agenda of the religious Right and assumed a stance that, in essence, gave them a putatively high moral ground and, therefore, justified special restrictions on art they labeled objectionable. Specifically,Helms proposed an amendment to the 1990 Interior Appropriations Bills, known as the "Helms Amendment," prohibiting the use of federal funds by the NEA and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the production and dissemination of "(1). obscene or indecent materials,including but not limited to depictions of sadomasochism,homoeroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals engaged in sex acts; or (2). material which denigrates the objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particularreligion or non-religion;or (3). material which denigrates,debases, or reviles a person, group or class of citizens on the basis of race, creed, sex, handicap, age, or national origin" (Congressional Record,July 26, 1989, quoted in Buchwalter 1992, p. 3). This amendment proposal was later modified to bring art content conformity in line with existing obscenity laws. The modified version contained language that was more vague and hortatory:"(1). the average person, applying community standards,would find appeals to prurient interest, (2). depicts or describes sexual conduct in ways which are patently offensive, and (3). lacks serious artistic,literary,political or scientific merit" (quoted in Buchwalter 1992, p. 5).13 Artists who were approved for funding after the passage of the obscenity clause were required to sign an "antiobscenity oath," as it became known, and the NEA and NEH were made responsible for decisions about which works may be considered obscene. In response to these initiatives,the NEA was placed in a precariousposition of possibly denying the peer panel's approval for awards for reasons other than artistic criteria. Although the National Council on the Arts, the presidential advisory board to the NEA chair, has occasionally reversed a peer panel decision, it is infrequent. For example, from 1982-1989, only 35 of 33,700 (0.1 percent) panel recommendations had been reversed (Honan 1991, p. C13). Then, in 1990 four previously awarded performance artists, Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller (Fleck and Miller have been based in Los Angeles), were awarded grants by the peer review panel, but the panel's decision was overturned by the National Council on the Arts.According to transcripts of the council's decision (Honan 1994, p. C13), the grants were denied because the artists were like "hand grenades"given the conservative religious and political pressures. The council also stated that their decision must be made in a "political world" amid "political considerations." Although the council members did not deny the artistic merit of the artists'work as granted by the panel, they were responding to the hortatory demands of highly visible critics of the agency.Even though the Helms Amendment was deemed unconstitutional, the council still opted to follow the criteria set out in that amendment in deciding to reverse the panel's decision. Hence, although the overt cen-

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sorship of the Helms Amendment had been struck down under the Constitution,it continued to carrycensorial power as the agency imposed the restrictionson itself. The oppressive cultural and political climate imposed by the Right developed out of the Right's fear of the public transferringblame to them for difficulties arising in economic and social spheres. According to Jtirgen Habermas (1989) and Steven C. Dubin (1992), conservatives constructed a perspective in which fringe artists were not just symptomaticof subversivenessin society but were causal agents.To combat such a putative destructive force, the Right employed a specific tactic of searching for "hot button" issues in art works and then widely disseminating the offending element, especially in instances where the NEA contributed in even a marginal way to its production. As Dubin (1992) explains, in sensitive political climates, specific themes, images, and symbols become volatile. Particularworks that do not conform to "traditional"or "decent" standards of American values and that deal with sexuality, homosexuality and homoeroticism, religion and patriotism are used to produce emotive responses among a conservative constituency. Frequently,one or a few elements from art works are emphasized without considering the context in which the artist used them or what the intended meaning may have been. For example, the performance artist John Fleck was invited to appear on the OprahWinfreyShow,a TV talk show,where he thought he would have an opportunity to speak in behalf of NEA support for all art worlds (Burnham 1991). Instead, he states, he was treated like a "freak."Winfrey introduced him as an "artist who deals with homosexual issues and in his latest show urinates onstage and then mimes vomiting.... He makes love to himself dressed as woman."Fleck said that Winfrey took the most freakish elements from his work and sensationalized them, leading the audience to call Fleck a "pervert"and scream "I won't pay my tax dollars for your garbage"and other more perverse comments.Fleck was able to make only a few soundbite remarks (e.g., "don't cut off the fringe, because it's part of the fabric"and "I am a morallyconcerned artist")but would have appreciatedhaving an opportunityto explain: and I not onlydealwithhomosexuality,dealwithotherissuessuchas homelessness I I people.Why dysfunctional relationships.... live in a citywithover70,000homeless aboutme peeing to aren'twe trying finda pot for themto pee in insteadof worrying in this pot onstagewherepeople have the choice to pay or not? (Burnham 1991, p. 194) By the early 1990s,with the rise of a strong cultural and political faction determined to preserve its perspective of morality and cultural standards,the position of performance art and other avant-gardeart worlds as autonomously functioning entities was a given. Surely the avant-garderepresented some of the most deviant segments of society, as construed by the Right. No longer was the avant-garde considered an autonomous social world that was, indeed, a significantpart among many, a status it enjoyed in the previous period. Now it was not only autonomous but it was being pushed further to the marginswith a reputationfor deviance.Its earlier standingas an accepted challenger of social complacencywas altered such that it came to symbolize all that was wrong with the nation. Concurrent with the demonization of fringe art, an exaggerated sense of significanceand symbolism was placed on many of the works produced.Again, as previously mentioned, the Right ignored the intended messages and focused solely on a few elements or issues that could be manipulated into producing an emotional response.

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The vehemence of the Right's attacks on fringe art eventually affected the internal structureof the NEA and its policies (e.g., grants to individual artists were eliminated). Funding cuts followed; the 1995 congressional budget proposed authorizing only $99.5 million, a cut of $167 million from the previous year. Financial hardship and the threat of closure loomed large for small, especially experimental venues. What was a fringe art world to do? HEGEMONYFROMWITHIN The demonizing of performance art and other avant-gardearts and the transformation of the NEA by the Right were not the only cultural,political, and economic factors creating a context for change in fringe art worlds.Although the focus here is primarilyon the influence of the national cultural perspective and the choices made by artists,I will briefly mention two other factors that had a strong impact on the performanceart world in Los Angeles and that also came to fore in the late 1980s.One is the dissolution of the downtown art scene because of a marked rise in the homeless population in that area and, ironically,because of simultaneous gentrification.Rents rose from ten cents to ten dollars per square foot and forced artists to seek cheaper lodging and studio space elsewhere. Because LACE owned its building,it remained in the industrialarea until 1993, long after most other galleries and performingspaces folded, but the vitality of the area dissipated (Kendt 1993). The second factor was the rise of multiculturalism. Although this was not strictly a local phenomenon, Los Angeles city leaders voraciously embraced the movement as its symbol for its anticipated leadership role in Pacific Rim economics (Davis 1992;Morris 1992). The impact of this trend from the top-down perspective of local policy making to grassroots efforts needs to be treated separately (Pagani 1998). I will, however, mention that multiculturalismbecame the prominent criterion for funding for small, community arts organizations in Los Angeles. The content of works and the gender or ethnic category of artists and audience had to reflect some aspect of a minority group. The use value of the arts was being tied directly to how it served specific groups of people. With the increasing vilification of fringe art, cuts in funding, and threats of censorship, artists across the nation made a few valiant stands against the attacks, but they were a weak political force overall. In Los Angeles, where LACE took the lead in staging demonstrations and working to support artists who were targeted by Helms and the General Accounting Office, LACE was simultaneously being undermined by a few disgruntled members of the local performance art community.A campaign of slander against LACE was launched with the help of the local press in which unsubstantiated accusations were made that eventually affected LACE's funding.14 During this time, a of the disgruntledperformance artists announced their plans to start a new percouple formance art space called Highways in Santa Monica, a beach city adjoining Los Angeles. So at a time when small venues were closing at an astonishing rate, these two artists received the support of a private benefactor to open a new venue. One of the artists, Linda Burnham, had also been the editor of the nation's foremost trade magazine on performance art, High Performance,which was housed in the same complex as Highways.The significanceof the opening of Highways in 1990 is that Burnhamand her partner, Tim Miller, set the agenda for performance art not only locally but nationally

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because of their relative stability, control and support of the press, and by adapting to the local multiculturalfervor.15 Within a few years Burnham and Miller had established the role of Highways and defined the direction of performance art. Initially,they started the space for personal career reasons.As Miller said, "I'm very unusual in that I founded the two main performance centers in this country.Frankly,for an artist,it's the smartestthing you can do to nurture your work" (Breslauer 1994). Based on the opening announcements for Highways, the area's performanceartists assumed that the space would fill a void created by the closure of numerous other venues over the previous few years. So, indeed, the performance arts community enthusiasticallyresponded to a call for help by Highways's directors by participating in a four-day marathon, presenting seventy-five artists in benefit performances. The proceeds,accordingto an April 5, 1989, press release, were to "benefit the furtherdevelopment of HIGHWAYSas a performancecommunitycenter." The media coverage of the opening was extensive,and Burnhamand Miller were lauded for starting a space at a time when many venues were closing (Breslauer 1989b;Manus 1989; O'Dair 1989;Zimmer 1989). Contraryto the expectations of the general community of artists, however, Miller and Burnham had a specific agenda to fulfill through Highways.Miller states, "A year and a half ago it seemed just like we needed another space, but the idea's become more focused on interculturalchallenge .. . We're especially interested in new performance forms, in work that is formally challenging, but work that is also related to community,cultural communication,and social issues" (Breslauer1989a).Actually,there was nothingnovel aboutthe kindsof worksBurnhamand Miller wanted to present at Highways. Indeed, according to Carlson's (1996) history of performanceart, this era marked the end of performanceart's classificationas avantgarde, especially in terms of form and content.That Highways'scuratingstandardswere limited to specific political agendas and Miller's aesthetic taste was a source of disappointment for many of the area'sperformanceartists. A rift developed quickly in the performance art community.First,many of the area's artists were disappointed that Highways did not assume the democratic organizational structureof LACE. Fringe artists understood that some venues came into being to meet the artisticneeds of one or a few individualsbut, given the commandingposition Highways was able to assume, they expected the new space also to rely on the arts community's input. In Highways's case, the two directors had the final word on curating decisions, and all such decisions fell within their increasinglytight boundaries. The second problem many performance artists perceived with Highways was its restrictive curating criteria based on Miller's art and activism in support of gay issues. He believed that all artists needed to declare their personal life situation as a political statement in their work: I thinkit'sreally vitalforpeopleto reactto theirtime.Especially It's youngartists. the samereasonthathadme callingRobertWilsonandMerceCunningham fagsin lazy the SohoNews'causetheywouldn't definethemselves Peoplehaveto find politically. I'm about theirboundaries. suretherewillnowbe a wholeschoolof workthatis purely as to 1991, 176) confrontation, opposed it beingpartof whatyou'redoing. p. (Durland In developing Highways's curating standard, Miller's interest in identity politics was extended to any group that laid claim to experiences of injustice by mainstreamforces.

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In particular,the identities of interest were those of minority people such as "gays and lesbians, Chicanos, blacks, Asians, the poor, the homeless, unemployed blue-collar workers,women, the disabled ... 'We're trying to step into the "90s,"'says Burnham, 'and with a new way of interacting with the so-called disenfranchised"'(O'Dair 1989, p. 26). Hence, most of the works Burnham and Miller chose to present at Highways were either thematically focused on politics of identity, particularlythe victimization experienced by members of that group or by artistswho had to identify themselves with one or a combination of the designated categories and make a reference to themselves in that social position. As one artist sardonically stated about the curating policy, the "ideal performer would be a Chinese-born Jewish lesbian ventriloquist with cancer" (Ohland 1993,p. 18). Highways's agenda went unopposed for more than half a decade. By focusing their curating criteria on identity politics and performers' and audience's socially ascribed characteristics, Highways gained the support of local funding agencies and private foundations committed to community affairs, especially those committed to serving those defined underserved.Highways's politically correct stance, however, also imbued a fear among excluded artists of being called racist if they were to criticize Highways'sagenda (an admissionmade by several respondents).Highways'spersonnel were also in a unique position to pursue their in-house radicalizingagainst the Right because they were too new as an organization to be subject to investigation for misuse of public funds.Also, Miller's position as one of the "NEA Four"'16 fostered local sympathy and support, prifrom the press and from gay and lesbian organizations. marily The issue of autonomy was being framed in a different context as the performance art world of the 1990s faced, however unintentionally,its dissolution. In the previous era, fringe art organizationswere exemplars of social democracy and self-determination for the producersof art while concomitantlyworking to expand the boundaries of inclusiveness across aesthetic intents as well as gender and ethnic lines. In the 1990s,a small group of performance artists restructuredthe lines of inclusion to be narrowly defined primarilyaccordingto politically based identity categories.Compared to the expansiveness of the boundaries for the performance art world in the previous era, the shifting boundaries of the 1990s actually became highly restrictivefor artistsand more disparate for, and less focused on, that art world. In other words, as this art world in the 1990s came to define itself primarilyby its affiliationwith social categories of race, homosexuality, and so on, it gradually effaced itself as a viable autonomous sphere of collective activity. The effacement of this art world's autonomous status was further promoted in two ways:by narrowlydefining acceptable content and form and by reducing the art form to a solipsistic level of function as a tool for amateur drama-therapy. mentioned earlier, As artistswere selected to perform at Highways if they represented a particularcommunity or issue, especially of minority standing, and, more to the point, if the content of their work related to their victimization as a member of a minority group.For the most part, the content had to be easily identifiable and classifiable as seen in a 1990 programming list in which twenty-five out of twenty-eight performance art works were labeled with one of the following content descriptions:"gay i.d., nationalism, feminist, Latino i.d., Mexican folklore, church/state,Asian-U.S. i.d., racism,homelessness, aging, body awareness, black i.d." Furthermore,to make the message of the works easily accessible to target audiences (i.e., those whose issues were purportedlybeing expressed), the accept-

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able form became theatricaland text-based. Other notable changes in form were its lack of collaboration, meaning the works were often solo, and that the use of multi-media became bare bones. These changes reflect Miller's aesthetic preferences.He states that artistsneed in to speaklouderandclearer.... I'mjustmoreinterested textsnowbecausethey're more specific. And it seems we're in a specifictime when wordsmattera lot. ... All performance. these [Also, I am] part of a movementtowardsa theatricalized For the most part-allowingfor recentworks]are scripted performances. [Miller's and possession-the formhasbecomemorecomic, energyandmomentum demonic I transformational.... don'tthinkI was good at large text-heavy, autobiographical, became the The clouded.... Theyweremyworstpieces. message, intent, group pieces. It's and I havea deepbeliefin autobiography in creating and identity representation. the mainjob of performance. manypeoplearedoingworkthatis identity-based, So whichto me is the betterway of puttingit than autobiographical. (Durland1991, pp.175,176) For many of the area's artists the problem with Highways supporting its particular causes and aesthetic forms was not in the subject matter or the form, but that these narrow criteriawere the only ones allowed a voice. Performanceart became known nationally to a new generation by Highways's model. Numerous performance artists from Los Angeles who did not conform to Highways's criteria found that for many years, getting bookings elsewhere was difficult because the other venue programmerswanted what Highways was presenting.With little support for other aesthetic interests,the form was becoming solidified as the definitive way to do performanceart,which also nullified it as avant-garde. The restrictiveworldview promoted by Highways raised other issues as it insisted on content-based art and specific subject matter.For example, how relevant or representative was Highways's praxis relative to quotidian praxis,which had always been an issue for the avant-garde and those involved in the culture of dissatisfaction?As mentioned earlier, much of the fringe art world of the 1990s was perceived as a cancer to society from the perspective of a vocal conservative constituency-not that the opinion in itself mattered to performance artists.But also during this time, recognition or support from the NEA became increasingly less possible because of conservative antiart sentiments, funding cuts, and internal restructuring.I argue, however, that Highways's policies and actions increased the antagonism of art world detractors and, because of its restrictive aesthetics,reduced performance art to a tit-for-tatgame with political and religious conservatives.Just as conservatives combed especially fringe art works for hot button elements (e.g., a reference to homosexuality,something scatological,or flag desecration) to elicit an emotional response and to prove further that artists are the root of societal problems,so, too, did performance art use a similar tactic and often emphasize the same elements or themes to produce specific emotive responses from their audiences. One Los Angeles performanceartist and art critic complained of the currentpractices in performance art saying, "it lacks artistic integrity... . it's pathetic, bad theater, all 'me, me, me,' whining monologue," and "If I see one more twenty-one-year-old-gayman stand naked in front of an audience and talk about his dick, I'll puke."Neither conservatives nor the new wave in performance art looked for or encouraged depth, skill, or universal meaning in works.Transmittinga specific message to their respective groups was the pri-

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mary end game. In other words, the content from Highways's performances had an appeal to portions of disparategroups.Their means for accomplishingthis entailed eliminating aspects of performance art that might challenge its audiences' perspectives or prevent easy access to the message and favoring techniques designed to produce immediate emotive responses. In the words of Sister Wendy Beckett, an art commentator, both conservatives and Highways had an interest in "comforting"art;that is, knowsexactlywhattheythinkaboutit, artthatis veryeasyto reactto.... Everyone sees in they'renot challenged the slightest.... [An observer a workand]he [has]an He immediate reaction thinkshe'sright. hasn'thadto thinkaboutit. It'sobvious and "It's to him.That's 1997) (Moyers comforting. so niceto knowI'mright." Of course, the curators at Highways had no interest in appeasing any group on the Right, and they believed that by focusing almost exclusively on issues of disenfranchised groups that they were effective social agents. However, their intents and actions led them into the conundrum of effacing their autonomy as an art world and being almost completely absorbed into other social spheres and institutions.One area into which they dissolved themselves with their intention of serving minority or disenfranchisedgroups For example, throughout the was through what I describe as amateur drama-therapy. scheduled numerous workshops in which people of particulardisenfranyear Highways chised groups were invited to express and learn about their identity through performance and writing exercises and then work these processes into a performance for the public.Many of the prominent performance artists closely associated with Highways say that their first commitment is to the cause of a particulargroup fighting racism,sexism, homophobia, and so on. To create performance pieces, they merge their group's workshop experiences with their own personal experiences.Another striking example of the amateur drama-therapythrust of Highways's agenda has been its postperformancediscussion sessions in which the audience is invited to speak with the performer(s).When Holly Hughes, another of the NEA Four,did a piece in which she sat or stood for ninety minutes and talked about her mostly tragic experiences as a lesbian, the discussion group that followed consisted primarilyof other lesbians or gays talking about tragedy in their lives. In a discussion group of almost all women following a performance of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls that depicted rape,incest, and lesbian lovemaking,one audience thanked the SNNG for their depictions because, "What else do women talk about when they get together if not their rape and incest experience?" So, Highways's model of using performanceart as a tool for traumatherapy (although no professional psychological guidance was evident) or for identity conciliation certainly connects it to an aspect of life praxis,but the narrowness of intent and rejection of other aspects of performance art eroded its autonomous status. Last, the other way in which performance art effaced its autonomous status under the direction of Highways was that it found a survival strategy in associating itself closely with institutions of higher education where there has been a rise in ethnic, gender, and identity studies.The artists of the Highways generation said that the only way they can make a living doing performance art, if they do not have a grant, is to go on a touring circuit to colleges and universities.Highways's model of performance art also finds great favor among academics of postmodernism,semiotics, and literary criticism,

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who work with the same themes and theoretical bases as Highways.This was strongly evident at the first conference on performanceart in 1996.17 As I mentioned, the alliance of the Highways model of performance art with academia was a survival strategy,but what survives in this case is one form: a minimalist theatricalized form of performance art. In other words, the form has been concretized, institutionalized, and cut off from its formerly collaborative (that is, with other fringe artists of multimedia) model of previous decades. Performance art, for the most part, has been absorbed into academia as another means for dealing with topics of social identity. As an autonomously functioning body, a performanceart community or art world no longer exists in Los Angeles and, based on information from the above mentioned conference, this art world has greatly dissipated as well in New York, formerly another major center for performance art. Pockets of activity emerge occasionally,but the poor attendance, even by colleagues, is disheartening.Upcoming generations have nowhere to go to become immersed in a scene. Indeed, performance art may be dead. On the other hand, it may one day enjoy a revival and assume a new role. It may arise out of academia, which has launched art movements in the past. To flourish,performance art seems to need a situation favorable to collective activity and a token of recognition, acceptance,and support as an integral part of a society. CONCLUSION What of the conundrum posed by Btirger in the case of these two periods of performance art and the related questions asked by Carol Becker in the introduction?Based on the evidence in this study, a remarkable situation occurred in the earlier period of performance art, in which artists,particularlyartists whose main intention was to challenge the status quo, were accepted, supported, and encouraged to make art according to their aesthetic conscience. This art world still had an autonomous status-it was an accepted, recognizable social sphere existing for a particularpurpose that contributedin immeasurableways to the cultural well-being of the nation-and it enjoyed a brief public trust that permitted experimentation and even outlandishness and abstruseness as part of a process for perhaps finding lasting discoveries for making art that touches or moves some nonutilitarianaspect of human being. Although such esoteric motives may not have been expressed in these terms, artists did talk, for example, about their intentions to exploit tensions between content and form and to leave some ambiguity in the meaning of the work so that audiences had to think about, interpret, and experience the art perhaps in new ways. Certainly such art was not accessible in the way popular cultural media are intended to be (easily understood by mass consumers),but fringe art was accepted as a needed balance to popular culture.Furthermore,the public's acceptance of fringe art worlds, as expressed through NEA support, demonstrated a democratic attitude by supporting a form of expression that was often inherently challenging to interpret while concurrently confronting the perspectives of many social spheres. During this period, performance and other fringe arts had a standing with the public similar to science.That is, the general public was not necessarily expected to understand or follow the activity of communities of scientists,but there was an implicit trust that scientists knew their fields and that their work potentially benefited humans,even in more

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theoretical and esoteric areas of study.This perspective toward science afforded scientists the material and moral support needed to pursue their work. So the rapportbetween the public, as viewed through the NEA, and performance art and other fringe art worlds produced a situation highly conducive to the needs of artists and to creating an atmosphere of acceptance of even their eccentric activities.In turn, numerous artists in Los Angeles became involved in an experiment to democratize the production of fringe art within their art world with a goal to aid artists,especially those breaking new ground, by providing the means to produce and disseminate their work. In pursing these goals, LACE actively solicited works from the area's artists,providing opportunities to artists from a broad spectrum of gender and ethnicity.So the responsibility of artists to society at this time was, as one artist said, "to make art that's challenging and to keep making it!" Then in the 1990s the arts and particularlyfringe arts came under public attack led by the religious and political Right who held artists responsible for cultural and moral decay and accused them of being undemocraticprecisely because art works were elitist and intellectual and not relevant to the American public.The proof for the latter accusation lay in their logic that if Americans wanted the arts,Americans would pay to see them, and the arts would then survive in a market system and not need government assistance (Jarvik 1997). Realizing that the arts have never been economically selfsufficient,a few left-thinking artists and any funding agency that did not want a reputation for contributing to elitism and moral decay scrambled for a way to appease the Right or to counter its accusations and still justify a need for arts funding.A major step taken by funding agencies was to redefine the use value of art in terms of it providing a social service, especially to groups traditionally underserved. Rather than focusing on the development of art itself, the funding emphasis shifted and then rewarded arts organizations based on the development of audience and education outreach programs (see Brustein 1999 for many specific examples of how major funders changed their requirements and how arts organizations redirected their energies to meet the requirements). Even in its survey report,American Canvas,the NEA (1997) capitulates to this trend in art support: "The closing years of the 20th century present an opportunity for the reexamination of the structuralunderpinningsof the nonprofit arts and speculation on the development of a new support system:one based less on traditionalcharitablepractices and more on the exchangeof goods and services." For funders to advocate that artists and arts organizations be culturally aware and sensitive to various ethnicities and that all groups have fair access to arts supportand productions is hardly a debatable goal, but making this the primaryend game has had some deleterious effects on art production.One obvious effect has been a shift in energy from supporting and making art to doing social work. As a staff member of LACE commented, "SometimesI spend so much time with the homeless and with securityproblems that I wonder if we're an arts organization or a homeless shelter. Arts organizations shouldn't be expected to overcome social problems that no one else can."A related critique of coercive philanthropyis offered by ChristopherKnight (1994), an art critic for the Los Angeles Times,in the wake of the Los Angeles riots when politicians and art administratorswere asking,"Can the arts heal L.A.?" Knight countered with the question, "Can L.A. help heal the arts?"He then discussed how the arts have been turned into a "species of social therapy. . . . The notion of art healing civic sickness is finally rather like the idea of Miss America bringing world peace . . . Art's authentic power

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comes from the pleasure and excitement created in the beholder. Institutions can't cause that, only talented artists can. Yet therapeutic culture usurps the role of assigning art's power by claiming it for institutions."In its therapeutic role, art no longer makes demands on the audience; the audience makes demands on art. "No wonder," wrote Knight,"the art that results typically seems powerless and wan." In the 1990s, the role of the artist and arts organizations in society was spelled out quite clearly by politicians, arts administrators,and funders; some part of arts money and energy had to be dedicated to providingprescribedsocial services.With all the rhetoric of populism, of making the arts relevant in the lives of members of various communities, these were edicts imposed on art worlds by mostly nonartists. Yet Highways embracedthe art-as-serviceand art-as-therapy movements with enthusiasmand designed and presented their programmingas an exemplar of the new social exigencies placed on art. Here again, however, I assert that neither I nor performance artists from the earlier decades have the opinion that the work presented at Highways did not have some value or a place in performance art.The drawbackfor most performance artists was that not only did they encounter barriersfrom nonartists to doing their art, but Highways,too, rejected all but their own prescribed aesthetics. Obviously,different ideas prevailed in the two periods about what the artists'role is and what constitutes democracy,and the debate continues. When recently asked what the role of an artist is in a democratic society, one performance artist responded sardonically,"We live in a democratic society?" ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported in part by a University of CaliforniaRegents' Dissertation Fellowship and by the School of Social Sciences, University of California,Irvine.I especially thank Samuel Gilmore for his enduring guidance in this work,Francesca Cancian for her comments on this manuscript,and the performance artists of Los Angeles for their forthcomingness. NOTES 1. Respondents five to estimatethatduring mid-1980s therewereapproximately hundred the six hundred and a to participants onlytwohundred threehundred decadelater. 2. See Carlson and of (1996)foran expanded (pp.79-99) fora description history performance of various The movements the the twentieth in avant-garde (pp.100-164). terms"fringe" century art and "mainstream" are used according the distinctions made by artistsof this time and to in whatwas featured the Los AngelesFringeFestival 1988.The disat place-as in categorizing
tinction, as I explain later, is sharperin Los Angeles than in New York.

3. Btirger's movement of the strictlyaestheticassessment conditions prompting avant-garde obscures socialconditions alsocontributed artists' As that to discontent. Crane(1987, 13) p. larger
explains, the industrializationof the nineteenth century and fragmenting of society affected the

in theirvalues. artThe whoshared artists systemof artpatronage whichthe elite classsupported

ists who lacked the support of the elite developed an ideology opposing dominant aesthetic values

andpromoting aesthetic innovation liberal and views. political 4. The notion that the institution art affectsthe public'sreceptionof art coincideswith of Howard Becker's of createsa workanddecides an (1982)conception an artworld. Although artist
on the content as an individual, the work's distribution and the social and cultural framework

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in which it is presented determine its reception and influence the aesthetic experience of the audience. 5. This detachment from mainstream art institutions was more characteristic of the avantgarde scene in Los Angeles than in New York, whose main art institutions viewed avant-garde innovation as essential contributions(Crane 1987). The dominant art venues and museums of Los Angeles, on the other hand, have a long-standingreputation for ignoring home-grown artists and opting to present famous,out-of-town artists (Davis 1992). 6. Respondents who have experience in both eras, emphaticallyclaimed that conditions were more conducive to making art in the earlier period. Furthermore,the amount of activity in and support for performance art are fairly measurable and show a steady, rapid decline with the advancing of the 1990s,based on performance and income records for LACE and Highways and the nature of the two scenes-one being highly interactive outside of LACE and the other becoming primarilydependent on Highways. 7. "Soho"refers to a vital neighborhood of art activity in New York City.A few other articles noting the burgeoningscene are Cox (1986), Lummis (1986), Skelley (1991), and Ohland (1993). 8. Finley is one of four performanceartists who gained nationwide notoriety for being denied NEA grants after funding had been approved by the peer committee in 1990. 9. Although Ross does not make this direct link to the establishmentof the NEA, he discusses both Soviet and U.S. concerns about "culturalcontainment":the Soviets wished to insulate themselves from capitalist cultural intrusions;U.S. intellectuals had a dubious response to the rise in studies and artisticportrayalsof the nation's nonelites and disenfranchisedin the 1930s and 1940s, that such attention to the general populace would resemble a communist focus on the "masses." The solution for the time was for intellectuals to recognize numerous categories of American groups and their cultural production-whether high- or mid-culture-thus demonstrating practices of culturaldemocracy and pluralism. 10. There is no dispute that the NEA apportioned the largest share of funds to what Arian (1992) calls "performance culture": traditional, established organizations such as symphony orchestras,theaters, chamber ensembles, opera, ballet and dance companies, and museums.However, there was a gradual devolution of funds and authority to state arts agencies that were responsible for allocations to community groups. Sometimes the NEA dispersed funds to a community group that made decisions about programmingand projects in its area. Thus, considering the numerous channels for distribution created by the NEA, some of the criticism it received might be diverted (DiMaggio 1991). 11. See Gilmore (1993) for a detailed assessment of NEA distributionsto minoritygroups.The study measures equity of distribution based on demographic distribution, finds the agency falls short by this standard,but then questions the validity of such a measure.There is no doubt, however, that the NEA made strides in the policy of social access unimaginablethrough private funding sources. 12. These organizationsincluded Donald Wildmon'sAmerican FamilyAssociation, the Moral Majority,James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Rev. Louis Sheldon's Coalition for Traditional Values, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, Jerry Falwell's Liberty Foundation, and Oliver North's Freedom Alliance (Dubin 1992). Dubin also discusses the tactics used by the Right to build a coalition. 13. See Sullivan (1991) for the legal arguments that counter the modified version of content restrictions. 14. Most of the accusations stated that LACE was serving neither the needs of artists or the The sordid story is based on numerous interviews with those new mandates of multiculturalism. involved and from private communiqu6s. 15. In 1988 Mayor Tom Bradley formed a committee to foster multiculturalismduring the city's push to attract overseas, especially Pacific Rim, investors. Consequently,all cultural organizations had to meet the multiculturalcriteria to receive funding.

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16. That is, one of the four performance artists mentioned earlier whose grants were denied after a peer panel approved them in 1990. 17. The conference included a panel discussion with scholars Carol Becker, Henry Giroux, Peggy Phelan, and Kristine Stiles.All but one panel member related performance art's usefulness to its content of identity issues and criticized the validity of form or process-orientedworks.

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