"Living Legends: Suzanne Lacy Teaches Andrea Bowers Performance Art, Inaugurating the New Main Museum in Los Angeles," by Catherine G. Wagley, Art鶹ý
With guest appearances by Barbara T. Smith, HIrokazu Kosaka, Simone Forti, and a number of Donald J. Trump piñatas
“I really need to stand up,” Simone Forti said, during a recent panel discussion in Los Angeles. The artist, who began performing with choreographer Anna Halprin in the 1950s and has been using her body as a tool ever since, had just been asked “if she thought much about spirituality” in her work. It was the first Wednesday in November and she was sitting on a couch inside the high-ceilinged lobby of a large, turn-of-the-century bank building that is now a museum. Longtime L.A. artists Barbara T. Smith and Hirokazu Kosaka were on either side of her.
The artist Suzanne Lacy, who came of age among 1970s feminists, was moderating the panel, which focused on the spiritual and the body, and had asked the question, and she told Forti to go ahead. Lacy was currently living in the building, the partially-opened, privately-owned Main Museum, with her friend, artist-activist Andrea Bowers. The two had embarked on a pedagogical experiment, Lacy teaching Bowers performance art, all day, every day, while also helming events like this one.