Last Friday night when the storms were brewing, I biked down to the lower East side to hear Susan Bee and Mira Schor join a group of younger generation feminists talking about Ana Mendieta. The intriguing official title for the event, held at Bruce High Quality Foundation, was: Feminist Urgent: Round Table – Ana Mendieta’s Artistic legacy and the persistence of patriarchy.
Anyway. Much of the energy for the evening was prompted by an action performed by members of the No Wave Task Force earlier last week. Performance artist Christen Clifford organized “We Wish Ana Mendieta Was Still Alive” on Monday, May 19, 2014, which included the spilling of a great deal of chicken blood she’d got from a butcher across the entrance to DIA.
DIA, for those who don’t know, is currently hosting a Carl Andre retrospective at their Beacon outpost. Carl Andre, for those who don’t know, is the widower and possible murderer of Ana Mendieta.
(This all works for the other blog I want to start soon: Don’t let them say you have mental illness when you’ve been so rudely twisted by the patriarchy.) (This post is for Jane.)
The first speaker was the beloved Susan Bee who said something very wise before her cue ball hit all the other little balls who had to make their points (including me) (of course). She said:
Let’s not talk about Mendieta as a victim; let’s not talk about Carl Andre; for in those cases the patriarchy wins. Let’s talk about Ana’s legacy.
ab chaos iter: you get educated by traveling 