Bailey Gardiner created the new brand identity and materials for Sushi – A Center for the Performing Arts, and so this weekend a few of us went there to see the world-renowned performance artist Karen Finley.  You may have heard of her — she’s famous for standing naked on stage, while cracking a raw egg on her head and covering herself with chicken feathers as she screams obscenities.  Yep, not for the faint of heart.

This is called “Performance Art“, which is defined by Wikipedia in part as follows:

In performance art, usually one or more people perform in front of an audience. In contrast to the traditional performing arts, performance art is unconventional. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways about theater and performing, break conventions of traditional performing arts, and break down conventional ideas about “what art is,” similar to the postmodern art movement.

Well, lemme tell ya — it was all that and a bag of chips.

What I found so interesting was the use of mass media in her performance (which incidentally was called “Impulse to Suck” and was about the Elliott Spitzer prostitution scandal — and did not involve nudity or chicken products).  Unapologetically and without credit, Ms. Finley used a backdrop of news images and live web feeds to illustrate examples of her monologue subject — Elliott Spitzer. It was fascinating to hear the artist’s interpretation of real life events, with the real life events serving as backdrop for her live, fictionalized performance of a real life event.

The news media is still an amazing and powerful thing, no matter how it is repurposed.  Ms. Finley, very much the center of attention, managed to provide a contemporary commentary on the role of the media today — while both vilifying and celebrating it.  I sat wondering how I would feel if our own media relations work for clients was used as part of a performance art piece.  Pretty interesting stuff.

But I still could have gone for a little nudity and chicken feathers.  And after learning a little more about Mr. Spitzer, sounds like he could too.