An off-the-shoulder night dress may be the sign when it comes to advanced, “proper” woman. Nonetheless, into the slim Skin of Normal wear that is formal developed away from Saran Wrap, pierced with outward pointing, 4″ roofing finger finger nails. The costume sources that tome of enforced femininity, “The Total Woman”, which recommended females for the seventies that to help keep their wedding alive, they should greet their husbands, showing up house from a difficult days work, in the home, putting on just wrap that is cling. The long fingernails rupture both this notion while the area for the apparel, and motivate the performance text that angrily and ironically confronts the absurdity of sex part definitions.
“2000 many years of patriarchy have actuallyn’t dampened my feeling of design. Whenever I have wearing the early morning, I’m doing a lot more than covering just a little initial sin. ”
The Dress: cling wrap, roofing finger nails, packing tape, zipper
Duration: ten full minutes
First done: October 1993, Western End Cultural Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Growing Up Suites
Growing Up rooms we and II explore the lesbian human body as a website of both pleasure and huge difference. Lesbianism, defined by wish to have other females, produces the label “homosexual”. During the time that is same concern with alleged social deviance is played down on queer people in a number of delicate and not-so-subtle means, from isolation to censorship to physical physical physical physical violence.
Clad in mid-century lingerie similar to architecture just as much as erotica, Dempsey recounts the secrets, discomforts and delights based in the taboo subject of youth sex. These tales tell stories of growing up lesbian: the attraction of sleepovers; the frisson of “unmentionables” into the Eaton’s catalogue; the uncertain globe from many years five to fifteen, marked by equal components wonder and confusion.
“Ten pages of underwear that resembled architecture, covered in buckles and zippers and snaps! Industrial strength underwear concealing parts of the body I didn’t have, parts of the body therefore powerful they required equipment to help keep them set up. ”
Duration: ten full minutes each
Component we first performed: March 1994, Le Lion D’Or, Montreal, Quebec
Component II first done: 1994, Rumours bar, Halifax, Nova Scotia october
Picture: The Banff Centre
Unruly
What does a feminist superhero appearance like? Can she leap tall structures in a bound that is single? Bend steel along with her hands that are bare? What’s her title? And does anybody keep in mind it? In a time ruled by truth television and celebrity tradition, whenever everybody else could be a star, Dempsey wrestles the thought of “super” to your ground. Discover the past reputation for masked avengers and caped crusaders! Hear tales of dazzling prowess that is academic! Be amazed by an aging, spandex-clad superhero and her change ego, an untenured women’s studies teacher. Each executes astonishing feats of bravery armed with little more than poetry.
“whom will save you us now? Given that everybody is so busy self-improving, self-constructing, self-promoting? If Superman has time for you to upgrade their Facebook status, that is vanquishing wicked? If many people are now a star, that is really super? All i can say is: the least among us for want of a better answer. The Clark Kents, the Peter Parkers. The unassuming, unambitious, the underpaid, the worried, the fine meaning, the homely, the lonely, the goat, the square, the drone, the also-ran, the fighting, the strange or at the least only a little various. Simply speaking, it falls to us. They didn’t require superpowers. They had them thrust https://www.camsloveaholics.com/female/nude upon them. They rose towards the event. They rose to leotards. And thus must we. ”
Duration: half an hour
First performed: May 2008, rt Building Community Symposium, Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, Winnipeg Manitoba
Photos by Lorri Millan and Janet Shum
Consideration Liberation Army
In the summertime of 2007 (40 years following the Summer of adore), Dempsey and Millan created a web-based performance/media piece having a mock freedom-fighting liberation force specialized in rampant thoughtfulness, critique and satire. Efficiency performers, as soon as feared, have actually in modern times been overshadowed by nameless, faceless militants! Terrorism is our tradition’s present fear, perhaps perhaps not art, perhaps perhaps not tips, perhaps perhaps perhaps not day-long happenings with human anatomy liquids! You can forget. Certainly, art and some ideas have already been overshadowed for too much time!
The vocabulary that is visual of Liberation Army ended up being influenced by the iconography of US radicals of the 1960s. Numerous categories of that period combined flamboyance, militancy, and eloquence to push democratic and social reform ahead (the elements Underground, pupils for a Democratic Society, the Ebony Panthers, etc.). The records among these radical motions are rife with heartbreak, problems of judgment, silly extremes and bloody tragedy. Also, they are filled with brilliant ideologies, inspiring orators, profound collective action, great cultural/artistic achievements and style that is high.
Maybe perhaps Not unlike a majority of these radicals, Dempsey and Millan had been relocated by an urgent need certainly to cut through the non-stop sound of commercial passions, governmental and business spin, news saturation and fear mongering. Consideration Liberation Army invaded the internet: a sits that is overwhelmed with status quo cultural and commercial content. They even ventured to the world that is real-time insert indications, symbols, tracts and noises made to provoke thoughtfulness, care and action.
The task ended up being unleashed regarding the public in Winnipeg on 1, 2007, and continued until September, resulting in The Summer of Thought july. The artistic/political “cell” gained recognition, energy and legitimacy through a web page featuring manifestos, video clip communiques, “audio bombs”, stencil packages and a revolutionary hiking trip. Stickers, buttons and graffiti marked general public areas. Making use of diverse web web web internet sites for the community, for instance the regional anarchist bookstore and coffeehouse, musician run venues, and downtown areas, CLA created a full world of discussion, and a phase for shock, pleasure, and thoughtfulness.
Performed: July-September 2007, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Photos by Wiliam Eakin
Mary Medusa
This task started as a performance that is short where the Medusa symbol ended up being reconceived as a fruitful, Margaret Thatcher period businesswoman. After that it developed into a lengthier, multi-media performance exploring contemporary icons that are female concerns of energy (“Who has power? Do I have energy? Where could I find some? ”).
This piece is certainly one of Dempsey and Millan’s Archetype Performances for which characters that are familiar the classes and pictures through the tales, urban myths and codes which have shaped us. Dempsey and Millan subvert these icons accepted definitions and re-tell their stories from the contemporary feminine perspective.
“I understand this may shock you, but beneath this demure, feminine outside lurks a side that is dark. An animal nature in the event that you shall that from time to time slips away. You cannot inform by evaluating me personally, but it is here. It is sneaky. It is sexy. And it also would like to let you know about a weightloss routine that actually works. ”
Duration: quick version five full minutes; long variation 40 moments
Quick variation first done: 1992, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba january
Longer variation first performed: February 1993, Festival du Voyeur, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Photos by Lorri Millan
Grocery Store
Grocery shop had been a niche site performance that is specific produced by The Co-Op Collective: Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, jake moore and Zab. For three months in August 2002, it supplied meals and meals for idea in downtown Winnipeg’s Ace memorial. The installation (a food that is functioning staffed by Dempsey and Millan) offered over $5000 worth of food, and important conditions unavailable in Winnipeg’s core. Radio ads, an advertising that is circular costs, and a mail-in-coupon campaign into the mayor requesting real-life downtown solutions, expanded the discussion in regards to the way of metropolitan revitalization inside our town.
Duration: 3 months
Performed: 2002, aceartinc. August, Winnipeg, Manitoba
