Reflecting a Sea Change
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A fifth grade class a school in South Los Angeles, Monday, August 21st, 2006
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Rows of empty chairs stand at an angle facing one another on the stage. A few people move microphones and adjust cords, run up and down the aisle two steps at a time, and shuffle papers in preparation. Outside the auditorium, groups stand around the elegant wood bar talking and drinking coffee out of paper cups. Scattered viewers peruse the gallery. There are voices, the speakers on a video monitor playing in the center of the gallery and people in the waiting area outside the theater, but my memory rewrites the scene with a soundtrack of silence.
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A young teacher walks her students out to the playground. As we walk, she explains that she is teaching about competition and cooperation. They are going to play volleyball to understand these concepts in practice. The students gather on two sides of the court and bat the ball around without instruction at first. A few minutes later, she stops the class to ask what they have discovered so far. Are they cooperating? Competing? Have they established rules? She asks the two sides to gather in small groups to discuss this before heading back to the net.
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The doors open and guests flood into the theater. The voice on the monitor from Andrea Bowers’ video piece, Letters to the Army of Three provides a voiceover in my memory for the procession. One after another, men and women ask for the numbers of doctors, request information, solicit help. As the audience is seated, I hear their voices in my head. The chairs on stage are filled with women now, except two empty chairs facing each other front and center. The women are chattering and calling across the rows. One snaps photographs as two smile and pose, their arms draped around each other.
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I walk over to one of the two clusters where one of the girls is clearly in charge. I wonder if she is self-appointed or if the teacher has designated her the leader. Two girls stand very quietly at the back of the group with their hands behind their backs. Three boys stand behind a girl in hot pink directing the group. She turns and offers them a chance to talk. They cringe and decline.
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The conversation begins with Jerri Allyn offering a tribute to Arlene Raven who has recently passed away. I am intrigued to learn that she chose her name when she set herself on the path of art and the women’s movement. She has an infectious smile in the massive images that glow on a screen behind the women. Next the organizer, Suzanne Lacy, explains that the women are sitting in rows by age. The twenty to thirty year olds are in the back; one wears a huge turquoise hat that hides her eyes and another a pink, polka-dot jacket. They talk quietly and seem not to sit up quite completely. In front of them is a row of thirty to forty year olds. They are lively and the flash from the picture snapper’s camera lends a festive mood to the row. Maybe it’s because Andrea Bowers, whose dynamic exhibition is the cornerstone of this event, sits in this row. Or maybe it’s that they mostly sport heels and grins. Across from them sits a row I can’t describe very well, less the group than my mind. The thirty to forty year old row is like a small mirror to me. Another group sits next to and behind them with an endearing mixture of confidence and what might be nerves. These fifty plus years olds are neither shuffling and slouching nor wiggling and snapping. Lacy explains that nine pairs of women, each from different rows, will sit in the front two seats with microphones and ask each other a question to be answered for the audience in what she refers to as a staged, or performed, conversation. The questions begin.
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On the yard, the teacher asks the students if they have used their experience to come up with any rules. The boys and girls raise their hands. They show her how to hit the ball. They tell her that no one can grab the net. The spread out in the positions they have designated for themselves and begin again.
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A woman from the twenty to thirty row, Kelly Akashi, is asking Barbara Smith from the fifty to sixty row, “Are you mad at us?” No, she exclaims. She says she is proud. It is motherly and sweet. They switch and she asks if the young woman thinks that men have changed. There is a gap. Akashi says doesn’t know. She tries to answer. Finally, she says she really doesn’t have an answer. They sit down. Next, Susan Mogul asks Haruko Tanaka if she has ever been married. It is not about art, per se, but no one has specified that it should be. Tanaka answers forthrightly the first time. Mogul is clearly interested. Tanaka explains patiently that she felt trapped at times by the relationship. Outside the bounds of the game, Mogul asks again. We shift in our seats as they go back and forth on what feels like a personal story and somewhat out of plce. Finally Lacy asks Tanaka to ask her question.
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On the yard, the teacher calls the students back to the court. She asks them what they learned in their groups. One little girl is tugging at the net at they talk. Her hair is long and black and strands of it fall in her eyes. Someone tells the teacher that tugging the net is not allowed and the teacher asks the girl to stop. She does, quickly, with what appears to be embarrassment. I think I remember her clearly, but now I am not sure if I have made up her hair. Maybe the child wasn’t even a girl and my memory has replaced a boy with this dark haired girl; I don’t remember. The students again play volleyball, but this time from their designated spots on the asphalt rather than spread in disorganized clumps.
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As the conversation continues, I am on the edge of my seat. I am thinking that it is far more interesting than I had anticipated. I notice that many whom I had expected to see were not in fact in attendance and wonder why. The women on the stage are all artists. They are from diverse backgrounds and have unique practices. It becomes clear as the staged conversation proceeds that there is not one point of view. There is not one issue. There is not one voice. There is in fact a history and a surprising connection between women from each generation, but there are, as Lacy points out, as many answers to a question as there are women. There is mention of feminism versus the women’s movement. An interesting conversation ensues when Anna Sew Hoy from the thirty to forty row brings up the possibility of constructing or claiming identity rather than owning up to one that is given to you. There is talk of history and the Woman’s building and standing on the shoulders of those who came before. There are guilt and admissions, honesty and laughter. A current begins run through the group. The staging gives way to individuality. There is a flow to the conversation despite the stops and starts. A wholeness emerges from disparate perspectives.
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As the students play, the teacher and I watch. She stops the students to ask them if they are practicing cooperation as they play. Students raise their hands and offer examples. I hit the ball to her, one student offers. We only hit the ball one time each, says another. They seem proud to be working together. No one mentions that some students haven’t hit the ball and it's ok. They're on the court too.
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When the staged part of the conversation ends, there is time for questions from the audience. A man asks why the issue of women in the art marketplace has not been addressed. Someone else, or maybe it is the same man, wants to know if men have helped the women artists. The very last question is asked by a dark haired woman in the center of a row near the front of the auditorium. She has been taking notes, I think, and seems earnest. She wants to know why there is not much evidence of collaboration among women now, or something along those lines. A chord is struck. The women who respond seem defensive. They are, after all, on the stage working as a group and it feels maybe like an attack on the flow they have constructed together, the effort they have made. The woman is wrong, they seem to say, she isn’t seeing what’s happening, isn’t looking in the right places. It is a question of context, of how to see the change. Is it occurring? Is it widespread enough? It is not the movement of the past and it won’t be, but how can we determine its larger presence? They are on the court and she, for the moment, is questioning the game. There is collaboration happening on the stage and in the environment and at the same time, there is not. It depends on your position on the field.
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There is a flow to the game now. The students are lobbing the ball back and forth with ease. They are smiling and having fun. From where I stand, it seems that everyone has found a way to participate. But then it is time to stop. The teacher asks them to hold the ball. She has to ask more than once but then someone grabs the ball and she asks them to line up to go back to class.
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In education, there is an idea that once we have a place for something in our minds, we can plug new information into it more easily. It is the reason teachers do things like play volleyball to teach new ideas. Neither being a woman nor sexism are ideas that necessitate new areas of my brain, but maybe a space is being created for something new. When doing research for an article, shortly after this event, and I heard that the fastest growing population of people with AIDS worldwide is women, I thought more about why that is and how we might change it. Normally, I would be outraged, but then would probably move on with the next article, the next piece of business. I did of course, but I’m still thinking about it too. And while contemplation does not equal action, it is a start and maybe a more important part of change now than ever before as boundaries grow both firmer and more complex between those with power maintaining the status quo and those striving to exercise their power for change. Outrage sparks change, and surely there is a lot to merit it now, but something else seems to be happening too.
Is this out of bounds or is it art? How much can we expand our definitions and stay focused? I don’t have the answers but here's to tugging the net from all sides until we change the rules of the game.
Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, September 2006)
Click Images To Enlarge
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Susan Mogul and Haruko Tanaka, (background: Suzanne Lacy, Corrine Pepion, Anoka Faruquee, and Anna Sew Hoy), Necessary Positions: A Conversation about Feminist Art, Then and Now, organized by Suzanne Lacy at REDCAT, August 20, 2006, Photo by SE Barnet
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Barbara Smith and Kelli Akashi, Photo by SE Barnet
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Susan Mogul and Haruko Tanaka, Photo by SE Barnet
