Performance Art

Don't ask me to define it, but some of the items in my collection seem to belong to the category of "performance art." Renegotiations of the social contract out of aesthetic desire or some less-easily-defined motive.

Coyle & Sharpe
Some artists have specialized in the prank. Some who stand out in this regard are Joey Skaggs, Alan Abel, the team of Coyle & Sharpe, Luther Blissett, Michael Moore, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, Victor Lewis-Smith, and Paul Krassner. I notice a certain gender bias here, but can only speculate as to what it can be attributed to.

Won't go any further without a tip of the hat to Orson Welles' radio show The War of the Worlds which gripped the nation in media-hypnotized panic in 1938.

Here's a good story: A student at MIT spent his summer days at the Harvard football field, wearing a black-and-white striped shirt and tossing bird seed around while blowing a whistle. A few months later, when football season began, when the referee blew the whistle for the first home game, the field was suddenly covered with birds and the game had to be delayed.

Five stars to a Mr. Lozier, who conceived of a brilliant hack in the early 1800s. He managed to convince a sizable crowd of New Yorkers that Manhattan was in imminent danger of tipping over under the weight of sprawling construction. After a few days, Lozier came up with the plan of cutting the island loose, towing it out into the Atlantic, turning it around and reattaching it to the mainland. He enlisted (I'm not kidding, folks) hundreds of people in this wacky scheme.

Bill Gates meets Pieman
The Pieman (in various guises) has thrown pies at such targets as Bill Gates, William Shatner, Maharaji, Howard Jarvis, William F. Buckley, Prince Charles, Anita Bryant, Daniel Moynihan, Quentin Kopp, G. Gordon Liddy, Andy Warhol, E. Howard Hunt, Eldridge Cleaver, Randall Terry, William Colby, and Jerry Brown.

Special categories of hoax performance art have been etched out by practitioners of The Great God Hoax and by magicians and miracle mongers.

P.T. Barnum was ever-creative in his use of ritual performance to manipulate behavior and belief. For a good example, read up about his Brick Trick. Points for tummult go to The Rensselaer Drop Squad for relentless dropping of big heavy things down tall staircases.

Talk radio call-in shows are targeted by the performance artist-pranksters Goy Division, and football star-turned-actor O.J. Simpson targeted both the legal system and American racial politics in his brilliant satire, The O.J. Simpson Trial.

Sometimes it's very hard indeed to distinguish performance art from what is commonly labeled delusionary schizophrenic antics. What do you make of Rosie Ruiz and her non-victory at the 1980 Boston Marathon? Or the amazing claims of IdEAL ORDER Psychic TV.

Emperor Norton
People who transform their whole lives into performance art get special treatment in our Fake Folks and Impostors pages, but I'll highlight a handful here as well:

First and foremost was a fellow who called himself George Psalmanazar (his real name is lost to history). In the late 17th Century, George wandered around Europe pretending to be a cannibal prince from the exotic orient. He made up an alphabet and lectured widely about the pagan practices and exotic wildlife of his home nation, even teaching at Oxford on the subject. In 1704 he compiled these observations into the book "An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa."

When Psalmanazar died in 1763, his memoirs, in which he confessed to the decades-old hoax, were published. His life was revealed to have been one long work of amazing improvisational dramatic fiction.

One of my favorite performance artists was a San Franciscan named Joshua A. Norton who, in 1859, declared himself to be Emperor of the United States (and Protector of Mexico). The Emperor's visionary proclamations were printed up in the papers, his self-issued currency was often honored, he corresponded with other heads of state, and his renown was such that tens of thousands of people turned out at his funeral.

Lord Buckley, poet, performance artist, and hep cat, gets big points for spirit and inspiration.