Tuesday, May 9, 2017

LAUGHATHON/CRYATHON: The Saga of Now; by  Linda Mary Montano and Jim Barbaro


LAUGHATHON/CRYATHON: The Saga of Now; by  Linda Mary Montano and Jim Barbaro

Please send us 30 seconds to 3 minutes of laughing, crying or both from your iphone. Musician and sound engineer Jim Barbaro and I will edit all of your laughs, cries and our additional sounds into a one hour recording titled: LAUGHATHON/CRYATHON: The Saga of Now. By sending your sounds of laughing and/or crying  to us, you are also giving us permission to use your sounds in the final recording. Your name will appear on acknowledgements. Thank you for laughing and crying. Art is good medicine.

Send your sounds to: natural@jimbarbaro.com
Linda Mary Montano and Jim Barbaro,  May 2017

Saturday, May 6, 2017

STEVE JOBS LAST WORDS

STEVE JOBS LAST  WORDS


  1. The last words of Steve Jobs -
    I have come to the pinnacle of success in business.
    In the eyes of others, my life has been the symbol of success.
    However, apart... from work, I have little joy. Finally, my wealth is simply a fact to which I am accustomed.
    At this time, lying on the hospital bed and remembering all my life, I realize that all the accolades and riches of which I was once so proud, have become insignificant with my imminent death.
    In the dark, when I look at green lights, of the equipment for artificial respiration and feel the buzz of their mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of my approaching death looming over me.
    Only now do I understand that once you accumulate enough money for the rest of your life, you have to pursue objectives that are not related to wealth.
    It should be something more important:
    For example, stories of love, art, dreams of my childhood.
    No, stop pursuing wealth, it can only make a person into a twisted being, just like me.
    God has made us one way, we can feel the love in the heart of each of us, and not illusions built by fame or money, like I made in my life, I cannot take them with me.
    I can only take with me the memories that were strengthened by love.
    This is the true wealth that will follow you; will accompany you, he will give strength and light to go ahead.
    Love can travel thousands of miles and so life has no limits. Move to where you want to go. Strive to reach the goals you want to achieve. Everything is in your heart and in your hands.
    What is the world's most expensive bed? The hospital bed.
    You, if you have money, you can hire someone to drive your car, but you cannot hire someone to take your illness that is killing you.
    Material things lost can be found. But one thing you can never find when you lose: life.
    Whatever stage of life where we are right now, at the end we will have to face the day when the curtain falls.
    Please treasure your family love, love for your spouse, love for your friends...
    Treat everyone well and stay friendly with your neighbours.

    See More

Friday, May 5, 2017

LINDA MARY MONTANO: 5 DEATH TAPES: VIDEO DATA BANK

LINDA MARY MONTANO: 5 DEATH TAPES: VIDEO DATA BANK


http://www.vdb.org/titles/linda-montano-videoworks-volume-1


Linda Montano Videoworks: Volume 1 | Video Data Bank
www.vdb.org
VDB is proud to present Linda Montano Videoworks: Volume 1. Originally trained as a sculptor, Linda Montano began using video in the 1970s. She is a seminal figure in ...

LINDA MARY MONTANO  STATEMENT RESPONSE: FOR KATY DEEPWELL/NPARADOXA



From: Katy Deepwell
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2017 4:41 AM
To: 'linda montano'
Subject: RE: Invitation to authors, n.paradoxa: 3 July 2017, London conference
 
Dear Linda,

Thank you so much for this – it is wonderful. Encouraging and really pertinent to what I am trying to achieve.
I will see what can be put together – and thank you again for the opportunity potentially to screen the U-tube video.

There was another contribution by you – which was the interview with Hilary Robinson – that you did.
I’ve attached it – just to ensure you have it for your own records. No need to add further comments.

Lots of love and best wishes,


Katy Deepwell,
Editor of n.paradoxa

n.paradoxa is published by:
KT press
38 Bellot St
London




LINDA MARY MONTANO  STATEMENT RESPONSE: FOR KATY DEEPWELL/NPARADOXA

How did the article/interview/artist project that you published in n.paradoxa represent a moment in your own intellectual history?

MY article  MONEY IS GREEN TOO MANIFESTO was born when I attended OCCUPY WALLSTREET  NYC and saw/felt/smelled the result of focusing on $$$$$$$$$$ only to the detriment of inner peace, especially when I read   one of the signs: COMPASSION IS THE NEW CURRENCY.
Being at this demonstration was like being in a war. It was trerrifying and big and momentous. I felt I might get killed.
Money had already killed me because I grew up in daily reminders of it's importance. My parents were depression-30's survivors and  second generation immigrants--Ireland and Italy...They worked themselves to soul death, almost, and I feared eating because they had to work sooo hard to feed us.

BY escaping the stink of money I entered a convent at  19 and didn't last, leaving 2 yeas later going from 135-80 pounds, food and emotional traumas still issues.
Because my art is my life, and money was/is still a big life-brain toxicity, I wrote about it, made a video about money and still go to therapy about it!!! And I'm 75! You would think, wouldn't you?



 Was it the start of an area of work for you or the end of something?
My relationship to money will only get better with intense meditation and time and maybe loss of ability to count?


Was it a continuation of long-term interests or a one-off?
Not a one-off. Am grateful to n.paradoxa   for listening to my money "share."

 Maybe you have a story or anecdote about reactions to the journal from colleagues? Or something that happened as a result of publication?
n.paradoxa   and England aer always held with HIGH ESTEEM In America and with our current leader DT in "charge" we wonder why we ever left your shores!!!!

I SLEPT WITH LINDA MONTANO: PAUL COUILLARD

I Slept with Linda Montano
Paul Couillard [1]

PC: Given your history in performance, I wanted to start by asking whether you see a distinction between performance or art and life?

Linda Montano: Until I wrote a recipe that indicated that every minute was performance, there was a distinction. In 1984 I appropriated all time as performance time or art, meaning every minute of my life was an opportunity for that kind of higher--not higher--but that kind of consciousness, a kind of awareness or--sacredness is a word that is laden--but that kind of sacredness. Before 1984 I made attempts, but they were for a week or a month or for shorter periods of time. In '84 I designed it so that the rest of my life will be in a work of art.

PC: So, everything you do is art because you've consciously identified it as that?

LM: Yes.

PC: Are there other things wrapped up in that, like a sense of discipline or a certain kind of awareness you try to bring to things?

LM: It's almost like... There's a massage form called Reiki, and in Reiki, there's a little bit of study, maybe a weekend workshop and three levels. Then there's this so-called initiation, and it's really an initiation into nothingness. It's so simple; it's just a laying on of hands. It's not as if it's a complicated massage form. And for me it was just a matter of consciously setting up the parameters that allowed me to incorporate, appropriate, grab all time as art.

PC: I was wondering about discipline.

LM: In the beginning it was about discipline. I had to do this, this, this and this for numbers of hours and days and weeks and months. Then I found that the overall intentionality worked to incorporate my needs, and the disciplines were really my own ego struggling, pushing. So when I lightened up and stopped pushing so much and creating boundaries and formulas, the permission to live in the state of art loosened me up. I started making more things that looked like traditional art because I was free. Before, it was always this sort of guilt of not being in the studio, not producing enough, not working -- which comes out of an art school training or a western model of abundance and consumerism. How can you say you're something if there's no product? When I took that away, I actually started producing, which is always an interesting kind of contrast. But given my philosophy, there's no need for production, because I am in the state of art, so to speak, at all times.

PC: Why was it important for you to identify what you were doing as art?

LM: Art gave me the same kinds of pleasures and aesthetic ecstasy as the Church used to give me. And because a woman is denied priesthood in Roman Catholicism, I knew instinctively that I would never be able to be a ritual-maker.

PC: Do you make distinctions? For example, when I contacted you about TIME TIME TIME,[1] I told you I was looking at durational performance and I wanted to present a series of pieces that were at least 12 hours long. You could have said, "well, I'm doing that right now" or "I'll come to Toronto and just be Linda Montano", but instead you organized a specific event with an audience component to it that could be published or announced. Is there a distinction to be made between performing a piece called Appreciating the Chakras and being in your kitchen making dinner?

LM: Sometimes you eat chocolate cake with raspberries on it, and sometimes you have a rice cake. Doing a performance like Appreciating the Chakras is the chocolate cake with raspberry sauce. It's a luxury, not necessary, but certainly something fun that I am still interested in. I see it as a night out.

PC: In calling everything you do art, and thinking of what you do as being an artist, do you think an artist necessarily has an audience? Is there a relationship between artist and audience?

LM: I think it's changing with computers and websites and so on. It's becoming a virtual audience -- a non-visible, non-visual, non-physical audience. Then there's the audience of rumor, the audience of legend and gossip--"oh isn't that the person that, you know..." being known for one piece. There is a hunger now for community, for bodily closeness, for performance. But there's also a plethora of taste. Things have gotten so specific to the person, that the people who will come to see a particular piece are drawn chemically by the taste of that person. The flavor of the piece coincides with the flavor of the audience members. I think there are a lot of different levels of audience, unless it's a person or a piece that has such a following or such a need to be seen. Other than that, I think that as performance artists we draw the audience with the taste that corresponds with ours.

PC: In an interview you did before the Toronto show, you mentioned that one of the aspects of maturing as artists -- I wasn't sure whether you meant specifically in performance art or just for yourself as an individual -- was accepting or recognizing that not all audiences are going to love what you do, or have to like what you do.

LM: I think that's an important lesson to learn, not getting attached to numbers of people in the audience, not getting attached to being loved, so that you can really do the work for the right motivation. Hopefully the timing of the work is right. I really think a lot of it is about the presenter. If the presenter is coming from the right place and is well loved in the community and does a good job of making the artist comfortable, the audience can feel that and they respond. I think it's a real collaboration, because you can do something in the right place with the wrong kind of treatment or atmosphere, and it's not a good time for anyone. Sometimes it's not the artist so much that's drawing the crowd, but the presenter.

PC: When you do a piece, what are you hoping the audience will get? Or does that matter?

LM: Community -- that they'll have a place where they can wash their subconscious of ideas or fears or taboos, and a place where they can touch a kind of magical sacredness, have a spiritual high. Moving through matter and the dirt and detritus of matter as a jumping-off place to this ecstasy.

PC: Do you have any thoughts about the element of time in your work? I chose you for TIME TIME TIME because I was familiar with the fact that you had done a seven-year project of exploring the chakras, where every moment of every day for quite a substantial length of time was devoted to or charged with the intent of the particular project you were working on.

LM: Working with time allows for a timelessness. You almost have to grab time to go out of time. Focus and concentration and discipline and spaciousness all happen at the same time when you work with endurance and time. It inhibits scatteredness. It inhibits shallowness. It helps us to go to places that change brain waves, literally. If something's done for a long period of time, then brain chemistry changes. All of those things interest me.

PC: I was very intrigued by the way you chose to structure what we called the 'piece' Appreciating the Chakras. Essentially, there were two parts. The first part of 3 1/2 hours was a soundscape that people could enter or leave as they wished, just soaking in the energy of it. The second part required a different level of commitment on the part of the people who were involved. They were no longer participating spectators; they were being what they were being. You asked us, in a sense, to sleep together.

LM: "I've slept with Linda Montano."

PC: (Laughing) I'll bet you have! In the morning, when we were ending the performance, one of the things you spoke about was that there was a sense of community created in our being together, just in doing a simple action together like sleeping. But people had to commit to be there for that 7-hour period and not leave in the middle, whereas the first part was set up so that anyone could come and go.

LM: A lot of that was just practical safety, in terms of doors opening and closing, people coming in, and protecting the space. Because people were sleeping, the space had to be different, so the parameters were different. But time is energy. We are energy. And energy needs a lot of attention. If we're busy, if there's a divorce from energy, then it’s like not being nurtured, not getting enough food. All of these actions are vehicles. They're designed to produce the effect of feeling aliveness and energy -- and maybe, if there is such a thing, a chemical shift in the brain where it's touching bliss or sacredness.

PC: Is it fair to say that what's involved is a commitment to acknowledging and working with the particular energy of time?

LM: When you translate time, the next word you get after time is death -- because time is so mysterious and it's all about the race against time, or time out, or time is over, or time is up, etc. Time is a real piece of the puzzle that nature holds and has control of. When artists play with time, they're playing with God's toy, nature's toy. It wasn't designed for us to play with, but artists never play with anything that isn't sacred. Or, it's the artist's prerogative to go into that playground. Time brings up issues of dying and of death. And of impermanence and of change and of flux and of loss. "Time marches on." "I don't have enough time for that." It seems to dog us and nip at our heels and run after us. We don't have enough of it, but when the focus changes, when the artist uses time as a material -- a clay to mold -- the artist can use that material to reach timelessness -- no-time. And no-time is bliss or ecstasy or energy, pure energy.

[1] Paul Couillard is the director of FADO, an alternative space in Toronto, Canada. This interview took place in conjunction with a festival entitled TIME TIME TIME, a twelve month series of durational performances by artists from the US, UK, and Canada curated by Couillard. Montano’s contribution Appreciating the Chakras took place from January 30-31 in the Canadia dell’Arte Theater Troupe Studio Space. The title, I Slept With Linda Montano, refers to the 7- hour endurance, Chakra Sleepover/Workshop, Montano offered as part of the event. The unedited interview can be found at http://www.performanceart.ca/.

MOTHER TERESA BIO


BIO/MOTHER TERESA 

I was raised orthodox Catholic and this informed my mind, my art and my life. As a result of this early spiritual training I lived two years in a convent, years in an ashram, years in a Zen monastery and years making transformative art of my daily life, my illnesses, my traumas, my hopes and fears. Having  performed  "creative schizophrenia" by morphing myself into different personas since 1975, (see MASKS on You Tube), I began performing as "real" people about 15 years ago, starting with Bob Dylan, Paul McMahon and also as Mother Teresa. The Mother Teresa doppelganger performance was born as a result of my chronic illness called Cervical Dystonia. It makes me tremor, scrunch up, spasm and twist with pain. One day I was doing all of that and my inner voice said, "I feel just like Mother Teresa!!!" So of course, having designed the MY ART IS MY LIFE manifesto back in 1969, I became her, as art,  every chance I had and for her 100th birthday I performed as her in protest at the Empire State Building because they would not turn on the lights to blue and white to honor Mother Teresa but they did turn the lights on for Sponge Bob.Yellow of course.
At the performance, Catholic and non-Catholic visitors/protesters came to me for "blessings" and the ecstasy of incorporating her holiness into ME and sharing that faux-holiness with the Catholics at the ESB was both overwhelming and  radically questioning of the theological politics of the church which does not allow for womenpriests let alone performance art recreations of Saints! I am left wanting to be her in secret, everyday, in the performance of everyday non-art.

Mark Shaw filmed the event  and my four Guardians: Andrea Dominguez, Miss Toni Silver, Zhenesse Heineman and Leah Aron kept me safe and authoritatively unharmed as seen in the video LINDA MARY MONTANO CELEBRATES MOTHER TERESA'S 100TH BIRTHDAY, You Tube.


www.lindamontano.com

LIST OF PEOPLE NOT IN THE BOOK: PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80'S: NOW IN FLAES LIBRARY, ARCHIVE OF LINDA MARY MONTANO



 
LIST OF PEOPLE NOT IN THE BOOK: PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80'S: NOW IN FLAES LIBRARY, ARCHIVE OF LINDA MARY MONTANO

FOOD (MAYBE)
FRANK SCHIFREEN
ELIZABETH CROSS
YUSHIN
CYNTHIA SINCLAIR
BILL GORDH
JACQUES HALBERT
TAKAHESHI KOSUGI
LINDA MONTANO
MILDRED MONTANO
BARBARA SMITH

SEX
KATHY ACKER
BARBARA SMITH
LUTZ BACKER
JUDITH BARRY
MARGARET FABRIZIO
MELVIN FRELICHER
BILL HARDING
TOM JARIMBA
SUSAN KLECKNER
ANNA KOSTER
TONY LABAT
SYLVIA NAKKACH
AVIVVVA RAHMANI

MONEY/FAME
ELIZABETH CROSS
SUSANNAH DAIKEN
JAIME DAVIDOVICH
NORMA JEAN DEAK
COCO GORDON
SPALDING GRAY
JEFFERY GREENBERG
JON HENDRICKS
OAUL KOS
PHIL NIBLOCK
MICHAEL OSTERHOUT
LIL PICARD
MARK RENNIE
TERRY SULLIVAN
BETH ANN SWARTZ
MIERLE UKELES

RITUAL/DEATH
BARRY BRYANT
MOLLY DAVIES
MARY BETH EDELSON
CLAIRE FERGUSON
ALLYSON GRAY
SALLY JACQUES
LISA LYON
MASA NOSCAN
TONY MAY
DOMINIQUE MAZEAUD
LINDA MUSSMAN/CLAUDIA BRUCE
SUSANNA OISHI
MICHAEL PEPPE
AYSHA QUINN & JOHN STURGEON
PAUL RYAN
FRANK SHIFREEN
ANDY SOMA
CHARLES STEIN/GEORGE QUASHA
VICKI STERN
WINSTON TONG
YOSHI WADA
RON WALLACE
JULIE WINTER
NINA WISE