Heaps Interviews Nelson of the Electric Chaircut
Published by Alex April 5th, 2007.Perhaps you’ll remember our profile of Joe Heaps Nelson, a favorite NYC artist. He’s just interviewed another local favorite, Nelson Loskamp, who is increasingly well-known around these parts for his performance art/grooming service, the Electric Chaircut. [whitehotmagazine.com]
I think its simply in my nature not to understand Performance Art.
I think performance art sucks. I was an art major for a few years, performance artists were always the butt of jokes. No one took them seriously, just as attention whores.
Oh, you nay saying bitches. “Performance Art” is such an easy target, like throwing a rock at a mime just to get him to make a noise. Granted, that’s fun and all, but c’mon.
The term itself is a flabby ubrella that encompasses a ton of stuff. Like all expressions, much of it surely sucks, but much of it totally rocks, too. Consider the rebirth of burlesque theater; you can certainly file that under performance art, and while even within that genre some of it definitely goes lacking, an awful lot of it is a showcase for brilliance. I’d argue that Nelson’s work is pretty original, interactive, arresting (literally), and immediate, which is the crux of good performance art.
It may not make ya think, but in Nelson’s case, it might leave you with a zippy new ‘do.
See, “Performance Art”, to me, evokes an image of some asshole defacating into a martini glass and then using his excrement to paint a picture of jesus being boiled in a coke can full menstrual blood on a canvas of old dixie cups that he has just flattened and glued together.
Of course, I’ve never really been an artsy guy and I may just be using using sweeping generalizations, but I’ve just never really “gotten it”.
Well, either you have seen something like what you just described, or you’re an artist yourself whether you realize it or not.
I say put that act together and take your show on the road, woohoo! Go Art!
As someone who has received a Chaircut from Nelson, I can say that it was fun, the audience seemed to enjoy it, and it wasn’t a half-bad haircut, for free. But in general, performance art is annoying, but not as bad as mimes or clowns.
I wouldn’t consider burlesque as ‘performance art’ at all. It’s performance, sure, but it’s dance, which has it’s own issues separate from performance art. Vaudeville is in a similar category for me, it’s performance, but it’s not performance art. Wikipedia has phrased it better than I can, I’m no writer…
“Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream activities such as theater, dance, music, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. Performance art is a term usually reserved to refer to a kind of usually avant-garde or conceptual art which grew out of the visual arts.”
That being said, I can’t stand a lot of artists for the same reason, visual, performance, performing, or otherwise. The “I’m pushing boundaries. I demand respect. I can talk bullshit about the ‘meaning’ and ‘impact’ of this piece for hours when it’s clear I just thought it looked neat.” is what gets on my nerves. It just seems to be VERY highly concentrated in the performance art scene (every single performance artist i’ve ever met). And you can see this while they’re doing it, it makes me cringe. But hey, I’m just one very jaded girl. Take it as you will.