[Xmca-l] Re: "cultivating Minds

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi Henry,

Sometimes the tool doesn't do justice to the message, and listservs (as tools for communication) are not excluded from that.

And so I was a little lost in what your confessional is and unsure how that connects to What is Art, which was the topic I was discussing (and how that pertains to Performance Art).

It is nice that you feel a personal attachment to Rubin and Hoffman and you loved them as your icons. There will be a time when no one will be alive to remember them and they will only be known as a wikipedia page. 

I'm not sure that there are many people like Hoffman in society at the moment who are challenging our notions of what is acceptable for the human race and the planet. And if they are, there is usually a process of monetizing it in some way. 

The only person I can think of right now is Medea Benjamin from Code Pink who might be an equivalent. Interestingly (speaking of wikipedia pages) it says about them:

"Code Pink often uses intrusive, political street theater to publicize its positions. Favored methods include the use of puppets, effigies, over-sized heads, and fake blood, according to John J. Tierney in a publication of the conservative think tank, Capital Research Center."

I find it interesting that a conservative think tank describes their "favored methods."  That is a very strange phrase.

The way I know them and has been most effective, which is how I know about them, is that they attend a hearing and they stand up and yell out their objections and their love for their country as they are being escorted out of the room. I never saw fake blood in these televised objections, but figure that is likely one element of many in their art palette in their "stage theater". 

When every country on the planet allows women in pink t-shirts to stand up and yell without arresting and/or maiming and/or killing them, it will be a great day indeed. 

I think I can say Hoffman's life could fill the Eagles song lyric, because time has a way of bringing out what is tragic and beautiful in the same place. Despair is a legitimate response to what was going on back then. Seems to me that you were threading the needle, and you have lived to tell it. 

I certainly hope you aren't taking the stance of General MacArthur about old soldiers fading away...

Kind regards,

Annalisa