Performance for Winter Residency Crit 2012 NYC

https://vimeo.com/55405133


WOW 7000 HITS!!!! Good old nudity ay?
Shame it went down like a cold cup of sick in the winter residency. Guess no one was ready for it. Nudity is very normal, this is the point, we are naked everyday. We use money every day. It is sacred/unsacred. I felt like a buddha with them putting money on my body, but people refered to once again, stripping and prostitution. I am attempting to find new ways of looking at this relationship, not obvious and cliched ones. Shake it off ... YES!

Montreal St Laurent Sex Shops

Performance with Linda Montano and the Glandettes NYC

HEROES SERIES:
Interactive Artist Talk/Performance by Linda Mary Montano, Alec Duffy and the 7 Glandettes, followed by a 12-hour lock-in with selected participants

Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012
Artist Talk/Performance at 8 pm, Lock-in at 10 pm with the 7 GLANDETTES:PATRICIA FAOLLI, MEGAN MARZEC, KRISTIN GREY, GETE BERHE, DOMINIC BRADLEY, ALEXA WILSON AND LILY BENSON
Tickets: $5, to benefit JACK’s teen programs (no advanced purchase available)
(Press invited for 8 pm event. JACK is open to inquiries about covering the lock-in)

Join groundbreaking performance artist Linda Mary Montano , Alec Duffy and the 7 GLANDETTES for an interactive performance experience at JACK, the new arts space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The evening will feature a talk/performance by Montano, which will include a screening of Mark Shaw’s video, Linda Mary Montano Celebrates Mother Teresa’s 100th Birthday at the Empire State Building, documenting Montano’s 2010 public performance as Mother Teresa with four "guardians" (Andrea Dominquez, Miss Toni Silver, Zhen Heinmann and Leah Aron). A 12-hour lock-in will follow, for which Montano has selected seven participants from a pool of applicants. The group will stay the night together, with Montano leading participants in a workshop, as well as eating and resting.
Linda Mary Montano is a pioneer in performance art. Since the 1960’s, she has explored how artistic ritual, often staged as individual interactions or collaborative workshops, can be used to enhance a person's daily life, to create the opportunity for attentional spiritual energy states, to encourage inner silence and to alter the cessation of art/life boundaries. Montano's work can be viewed at www.lindamontano.com, as well on her blog and on YouTube.

Dance at Moritzplatz Ubahn Station Berlin

https://vimeo.com/53428533

DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE

ITS FREE EXPRESSION OF THE FEMALE BODY FREE DANCE FREE DANCE GET IT HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO PAYMENT NEEDED. JUST DANCE

The Star: Berlin "10x6" Series at Ada Studio

Performing at Ada/Ufer studios Berlin "10 times 6" performance series. Nove 10/11 2012.

Description: Born out of a workshop with Vincent Riebeek in NZ in 2012 and prior work 'The Star' explores satirical and embodied notions using 'psychomagic' (Jodorowsky) of the tarot card of the Star (pulled in the workshop), interweaving a response to today's problematic relationship of humans to the environment and our 'needs' to be a 'Star' within a warped media culture, which overlooks a greater respect slightly more pressing. Drawing upon a complex embodiment of the Star card, the work interweaved the character of the superstar with the high priestess, struggling to present the news, the weather, chaotic weather patterns, impossible emotions in relation to superficial presentation, consumerism and attempts to find what the meaning of the 'Star' tarot card is. It represents hope, optimism and inspiration. She is seen pouring water, so I pour water onto the stage and lick it up off the floor. Among other things, like embodying a news reader/weather presenter/a woman giving birth to a camera, a sunbather, a cleaner, blood, flood, fragmentation, and a bound connection to technology, struggling to find its own bodily identity.

https://vimeo.com/53432804

Tarot Card reading on the Berlin Train system: Failure

 

 

This was a complete failure on all levels. The idea as suggested by Karin Hofko was to do free readings for people on the train system in Berlin as a replacement for payment of the train to demonstrate an alternative form of expressing female embodiment/arguably 'healing' in an erotic fashion (this kind of occult female knowledge is largely not valued in society since the witch burning days). However, while I bought a day card for my camera woman Daniela Gast, I was caught within the first stop by the ticket controllers, who got very aggressive that she was filming and refused to engage until she turned the camera off, while we were saying it was for my performance. They threatened to take us to the police and were very focused on the camera over me not having a ticket. I gave them 40 euro for the fine and they gave me a ticket receipt. I offered them a card but they refused. Then the camera was having problems, and did not seem to record that incident properly, most of which we caught audio of. It was glitching and does not transfer in editing, so we used my digital camera to video instead.

Then each person we approached on the trains and at the station declined an offer for a reading as if i were asking them for something. I was offering them something free, but the transience and the association with beggars seemed to be an overwhelming factor. Daniela, who is from Berlin, also said she thinks the German/Berlin attitude is very distrusting, very rational and that this kind of offer would be considered very strange. Even children who were staring, declined. Everyone looked afraid or simply disinterested.

This project failed completely from the beginning. Proven to me was the immovability of this system. While I often do not pay for it, I tend to be careful about where I go. I was caught on the U2 main line friday afternoon. It felt like being inside a very rigid system which was unable to in any way facilitate an alternative or playful process of deconstruction relating to money systems/female erotic emodiment. Clearly this was an absolute NO GO. No humour was seen in the process, people took it very seriously. Perhaps it was the time of day, week and season. It didn't matter speaking english or german, people were not open to it.

Yoga Poses in front of Commercial centres in Berlin's Alexanderplatz

 

 

 

 

The focus for these yoga poses this time was not to get tourists to take photos, they were taken by Daniela Gast, a collaborator. The focus was on juxtaposing the organic nature of the poses, which can also be interpreted gesturally as sexual in their attempt to 'open' the body for health reasons, which putting a private practice into public spaces which are commercially associated in Berlin's Mitte (centre). Once again, many people stopped to stare as if it were a street performance, but less like infront of monuments, they mostly wandered past in detached half present consumer mode.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10850060&fb_action_ids=10151120450661927&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=timeline_og&action_object_map=%7B%2210151120450661927%22%3A120205864805528%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151120450661927%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map

Love Is a Free Act: Geld Automaten/ATM's in Berlin

This piece was a response to Gabrielle New's suggestion of working with the power play over how money gets put into strippers underwear in strip clubs. Rather than wanting to embody this with an actual body or my body I was interested in the removal of the body and more of a guerilla interactive installation, which in the end felt like a form of protest. 

I made the connection between the sexual connotations of putting a money card into a machine and taking money out or vice versa in a similar way to a sexual action and this way that money is put into strippers underwear. I wanted something where the connotation is taken off money or giving and taking, rather placed on this idea of giving a free message and attaching a pen with other pieces of paper so that other messages could also be written. The simple message I wrote in this version was "Love is a free act" and also in german, being Berlin "Liebe ist ein Freier Akt" so that the connection between paying for sexual intimacy be returned to a consideration of an exchange made with is based on mutual respect, rather than the dynamics or power of money exchange. 

I bought 5 pairs of white underwear and went into a combination of banks inside to their machines and left the message and also the geld automaten directly on the street in the day and at night. Particularly going into a bank to do this under cameras and past security felt as if I was engaging in some kind of illegal activity and it also felt incredibly perverse to put women's underwear over the top of money machines. I left the underwear there and have no idea how people responded. I was not willing to attempt to document from afar or risk being caught inside a bank for this.

This left me really wondering about how someone would react, a couple of men saw me doing it, one inside a bank and one in the street and they were distracted and disinterested, perhaps semi amused. I also wondered what different areas would be like, as doing this in Friedrichshain is completely different from Neukölln or Charlottenburg or Mitte in Berlin. 

It felt very subversive, definitely as if it were a protest against the selling of women's bodies for sex, associating the everyday underwear object with the everyday money machine in a metaphor for putting money or objects into women's clothing or taking them out. It was a very big question mark and the absence of body, the lack of knowing how someone would respond, somehow makes it even more detached or removed- like our consumerist culture and its economic consumption of sex and women's bodies. Direct engagement with the banking system and its all seeing eye was terrifying and I felt the outsiderness of expressing an alternative to ways of viewing the female erotic body as if i were a pervert or a criminal- very much in a Foucauldian demonstration of power particularly relating to the panopticon and self policing. 

This is not a famous body

http://www.lindamontano.com/residency/index.html

Berlin Tourist Monument Yoga series

Just did my tourist series today - doing yoga poses (often as a spectacle seen as sacred or sexual & appropriated from india) in front of various Berlin monuments and asking tourists to photograph me in my red costume (which seems to be becoming a through line) ... which was highly interactive and interesting, could go a lot further. very cold today! but got some great shots and interactions.. responses. 

The photos are hilarious, once again I am reminded that my ideas are actually quite ridiculous while also serious. I am interested in playing the line of comedy/parody and earnestness, I don't think it needs to be set in concrete either. I really felt at moments as if i was 'disrespecting' some kind of institution (playing the tourist line but subverting it) and at other times like I was bringing something loving to it, bringing life/the suppressed feminine back to it, which was reflected back at me in responses from 'you look like a flaming flower growing out of the building' to 'ein bißchen comisch'... :) all good! 

A tour guide interrogated me and took a pic for me and himself about what i was doing.. which he understood and offered his card- saying he could take me to some really good places (he had a small riding cart) which is a different turn again, me 'paying' him to take me around.. and photograph me at these sites. Was it a come on? I noticed that men were fairly fascinated by what I was doing, but in the photos many people are also watching me as a spectacle. I am interested in walking the line between tourist and artist as a woman, the money related issues around this, spectacle, site, women's body as inherent monument unsacrilised in the same way as these monuments, like reinstalling the live female body not as an object so much, but as an identity, a presence amidst such rigid masculine structures. The humour as well for me could go even further though I like the on the edge is this for real or not? I don't know if i'm achieving it .. & its a beginning point.. particularly in Paris- i noticed a lot of the golden statues are of 'women' representing this notion of freedom (a bit like the victory statue in Berlin) - yet its a highly sexist culture.. seemingly. 

Ritual at Teufelsberg: Devils Mountain: Berlin: Destroying my rejected Health insurance policy for my rejected visa inc Pregnancy cover amidst rubble from WW2 moved by women

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg

On friday I did a ritual performance on Teufelsberg in Berlin within the Grunewald Forest, which is one of many 'mountains' in Berlin created by rubble from WW2 dumped within natural landscapes. Victoria Park in Kreuzberg is another. There are 2 mountains at Teufelsberg (Devils mountain) and we climbed this first one, which has the former American spy base on it. You used to be able to enter here illegally, but it currently has squatters residing in it who have sealed all the holes in the fence and are charging 7 euro to enter for one hour on a tour! 2 of my friends jumped the fence to have a look but the rest of us went to this other mountain from which this distant photo is taken of the spy base.

I brought with me my rejected health insurance policy for a rejected german/artist visa (as in the post below at http://burnandsurrender.blogspot.de/2012/10/pregnancy-healthcare-me-and-german-visa.html) in response to a friend of mine whom I emailed my project letter to who I suggested us going to Teufelsberg thought me doing something to this policy would represent this injustice of having to pay twice as much as a woman immigrant/foreigner to get a visa for Germany. I thought that this could be destroyed on top of the mountain and contributing to the 'rubble' of German history. With an axe bought for a performance 2 years ago from Berlin from men who asked me what the axe was for and I said "mein mann" laughed heartily (my husband) and I had made Germans laugh in german for the first time realising the humour was dark. When I said it was for a performance/dance they thought I was just weird. Then the idea was to pour water over myself and the insurance document, to 'cleanse' us, and the situation, then plant a plant within the soil with the destroyed insurance to create a new beginning. This is suggested by Jodorowsky, whenever something is buried something also needs to be planted, to bring forth the new.

Melody Watson

• definitely the whole pregnancy healthcare thing would be an interesting angle....it still totally pisses me off that i have to pay for the fact im a woman here!

I have since discovered that the rubble from the bombed city of Berlin was coincidentally all moved BY WOMEN from the city of Berlin. These women also endured horrendous sexual violence by the Russian forces taking over whom Stalin said they had 3 days to 'do whatever they wanted' to - to the city, which went on for 3 months. This is a synchronicity I found out after doing my performance ritual (that it was rubble moved by women), documented by a male friend from NZ who invited me to perform in Frankfurt, Matthew Ward. I am having trouble transferring the files from my camera to computer currently.

As seen in the first photo above there are natural human made tracks carved out of this second mountain unlike the first which has concrete paths and going down the mountain on then there is obvious rubble protruding from the dirt, bits of building, full brick walls from a bombed part of someone's house. I changed into my black tutu bottom from my performance Weg A-way, a solo about Berlin/the 'axe dance'- for me this represents the Russian 'ballet' love stories (often of tortured women, ballet itself tortures the female erotic body) as a 'dance' between Germany and Russia, plus the health insurance is from a British company Axa and the reason I didn't get the visa was based upon language difference and 'outsiderness' somehow residue of the war also. I wore an "I Heart Berlin" t-shirt and my blond wig, to satirise this identity- the Aryan child- I used to be blond also, so this movement from child to woman. Forced pregnancy healthcare costing twice than for a man is not only sexist but also definitely controlling of the erotic female body in relation to money. The healthcare is not even valid for one year, I suggested they create a discount for this to the woman I signed up with, as you're paying money for nothing for a year just to get a visa. An axe for me is from the Little Red Riding Hood story, a german Grimms Fairy tale about the safety/non safety of a girl coming into womanhood venturing 'off the beaten track'. Somehow being filmed/photographed by a male friend on this path seemed healing.

I got asked by an olderish couple in german what i was doing with my axe and I said 'dancing' ! who thought this was hilarious. I got changed, in the bushes, waiting for men to walk passed.. then began the ritual on a path leading to the other mountain on a sunny day in autumn. The document chopped well in the soil on the bricks and dirt. Somehow I had images also of this 'institution' the bricks as a broken institution.. and this visa/immigration/healthcare as an institution, fragmented. The water was heavy to carry there and it was a relief to pour it over myself and the document, which then cut even more easily. This ritual got dirtier and dirtier as I started to with my fingers dig earth to make a place for the plant and to bury the paper with the plant on the hillside with the bricks. Water and dirt was flicking all over me and I continued to use the axe to dig. The plant was from my flat balcony, symbolising my peace and goodwill to return here to this flat and to Germany/Berlin. I felt that I was somehow addressing the destruction of Berlin too and the torture of women during war within this but unconsciously. The piece addressed the past but the present more specifically, how to heal wounds of immigration for a single woman trying to travel through this world, how to find peace with a difficult place- despite and because of money and the erotic female body. Turned into art.. The couple on the hill asked "have you danced" (hab du getanzt?) to which I said 'yes of course!' and they laughed..

I was also interested in the blur of 'nature' and 'culture' in this ritual, the fake hill and fake costumes, wig, the real axe, dirt, plant, document. The fact that culture so often 'dumps' onto the female body, onto the Earth, as metaphors. This subversive and Ana Mendietaish.. ritual in 'nature' dealing with persona/political notions of money systems in relation to the female erotic body and its control. Turned into art through very much a 'psychomagic' action, combined with and supported by friends, both male and female.

https://vimeo.com/52297679