September 28, 2019, 2-4 PM

Book Launch: Performance/Media/Art/Culture by Jacki Apple, edited by Marina LaPalma, and a Conversation with Jacki Apple with Special Guest John Fleck

Experience interdisciplinary performance from the 1980s to 2018 through the eyes of one of its most compelling witnesses. Jacki Apple’s Performance | Media | Art | Culture traces performance art, multimedia theatre, audio arts and dance in the United States from 1983 to the present. Showcasing thirty-five years of Apple’s critical essays, the collection is a rich compendium of sharp-eyed and eloquent observations on the rise and diversification of interdisciplinary performance, how new technologies influence American culture and contemporary life, the interdependence of pop and performance culture, and the politics of art and the performance of politics. Brimming with big ideas grounded in concentrated reviews of individual performances, this volume offers current and future readers a rich portrait of performance culture at the end of the millennium.

”Only a handful of writers have the intellectual chops, creative intuition, and vision of art history to speak holistically about performance art, but Jacki Apple consistently proves herself essential to the field and how we understand it.  She digs into both the formal and the ineffable dimensions of performance with unmatched power and clarity without sacrificing honesty about the art and artists she clearly loves.  Jacki stands in the evolving vortex of performance art so we can see its future.” 

–Eric Gutierrez, Writer/former Executive Editor, High Performance.

PUBLISHED BY: INTELLECT, Bristol, UK
Paperback. 326 pages. Seven sections.
57 essays. 37 black and white photographs.
Distributed in USA by University of Chicago Press

Jacki Apple is an interdisciplinary visual, performance and media artist, writer, critic, and curator. Her critical writings include several hundred essays and reviews on performance, media arts, dance, music and cultural politics that have been featured in numerous arts publications. She was a contributing editor and media arts editor at High Performance magazine 1983-1995 and is currently the author of the online column Peripheral Visions: Perspectives On Culture, Media, and Performance. She is Professor Emerita, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA and the 2012 recipient of the College Art Association Distinguished Teaching of Art Award.

John Fleck is an actor and performance artist who became known as one of the NEA 4 during the ’90’s culture wars’ when he and 3 other performance artists were denied funding by the National Endowment for the Arts because of religious and political pressure. His most recent piece BLACKTOP HIGHWAY (which is  covered in the book) premiered at REDCAT / LA in 2015, and received critical acclaim in NYC at Dixon Place.  Other award winning pieces include: Mad Women, Nothin’ Beats Pussy, Blessed are all the Little Fishes, Psycho Opera and A Snowball’s Chance in Hell which was workshopped at LACE in 1993.