SEASON 30 | NOVEMBER 2017
Linda Mary Montano’s INTERACTIONARAMA
“I have found that by opening doors to the SUBJECT of death, I am asking death for friendship and knowledge and understanding. In doing so, my personal spiritual journey and curiosity are becoming educated to our natural and shared human situation. A good thing, I think. ”
Presented by The VORTEX
Linda Mary Montano with Austin collaborators
Announcing the return of legendary performance artist, Linda Mary Montano, with her new life/art-- INTERACTIONARAMA. INTERACTIONARAMA provides a HEALING COLLAGE as an opportunity for a willing community to see, learn about, interact with and experience aesthetically/performatively the old age, sickness, and death of my father, Henry Joseph Montano, as life/art. In coming into contact with another person's life story and our own eventual death, we will see, be reminded of and participate in the feelings associated with our death. This is important work. The video is a document of the time I took care of my father from 1998-2005 in Saugerties NY, after I left UT Austin.
Death, a tabooed subject and not always out of the closet of fear and dread, must be aesthetically exposed/experienced as the natural event that it is. Why? To prepare us courageously for our own inevitable deaths and help us all make some alliance and friend with that fact. We all share life and we all will experience the end game. Let us collectively help each other do that.
Audience interaction with death is at the heart of the performative experience. Collectively we will be supporting each other and learning together a new language. Viewer discretion is advised for this 3 hour experience.
performers
Linda Mary Montano is joined by Austin collaborators: Maida Barbour (Listener), Alton Dulaney (Choir Leader), Kerthy Fix (Angel), Carol Gilson (Listener), Suze Kemper (Secretary), Elana Logsdon (Water Healer), Rachel Martin (Life Dancer), Seven Sexton (Listener), kt shorb (MC), and Rosey (the Therapy Dog).
PRODUCTION CREW
Lighting Design by Patrick Anthony. Stage Management by Tamara L. Farley. Producing Artistic Director, Bonnie Cullum.
About Linda Mary Montano
Linda Mary Montano is a seminal figure in feminist performance art, and her work since the mid-1960s has been critical in the development of performance and video by, for, and about women. Dissolving the boundaries between art and life, Montano continues to actively explore her art/life through shared experience, role adoption, and intricate life-altering ceremonies, some of which last for seven or more years. Her artwork is starkly autobiographical and often concerned with personal and spiritual transformation. She explores the way artistic ritual, often staged as individual interactions or collaborative workshops, can alter and enhance a person’s life, creating the opportunity for focus on spiritual energy states, silence, and the cessation of art/life boundaries.
Montano has been featured at museums including The New Museum in New York, MOCA in San Francisco, and the ICA in London. She participated in Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh’s remarkable year-long work (1983-84), Art/Life: One Year Performance—a work that broke open many people’s concept of performance art as the two artists were bound to each other by a length of rope 24 hours a day for a whole year. Her endurance works have lasted hours, weeks, and years--each one a unique exploration of life/art.
Linda Mary Montano’s extraordinary career has influenced thousands of performance artists. She taught in the Art Department at The University of Texas at Austin from 1991-98. She is a mentor and coach to many artists including The VORTEX’s dear friend Annie Sprinkle. Montano even made a guest appearance in Annie’s erotic experiment, MetamorphoSex at The VORTEX in 1995.
See more at: http://www.lindamontano.com/
Funded and supported in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.