14 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE MARCH 11, 1994

ENTERTAINMENT

Queer piece brings homophobia to surface at Karamu

Continued from Page 1

had not already been found through the festival or Karamu House. I suggested he check with them and told him that I thought I could get help from ACT UP as well. Hennessy then sent out flyers to people he had spoken with in Cleveland that clearly stated his needs for the performance.

'I don't believe that you have only one community which is black and Christian and goes to church. I believe you've got a lot of people, and that by assuming there is only one

I spoke with Hennessy after he arrived in community, they are held hostage by the morals

Cleveland on February 22. He had found several volunteers through ACT UP and had chosen Rick Russell, whose body was the most pierced and tattooed. He had not yet found a black artist, but Rick promised to take him to the bars later that night, where they met Skot Gilmore, a gay black man willing to collaborate on the piece. Hennessy also indicated he sensed an uneasiness when he dealt with people at Karamu House.

The next day my heart sank when I read the Free Times piece on the weekend performances written by Frank Green. He praised heterosexual, African-American artist William Pope.L, whose picture was featured. He devoted two paragraphs at the end of his article to putting down Hennessy, quoting from an interview published in the PAF Hard Corps newsletter. Was Green, who is a gay performance artist from Cleveland, trying to make himself acceptable to the fairly straight Free Times by discrediting a gay artist, or was his attack based in professional jealousy? Whatever the reasons, Green never made an attempt to speak with Hennessy before writing the piece, and neither Green nor any Free Times critic bothered to attend the performances.

On Thursday, a Chronicle reporter informed me that Rick Russell claimed the performance was being censored by Karamu

of that community.'

House and that there had been vandalism of equipment in the theater in an attempt to prevent the performance. I decided to take an early bus to the theater and try to find out what was going on. Rick Russell, who was very angry, told me there had been a long and torturous meeting with the Karamu House staff who objected to the nudity in the performance. Festival Director Mulready declined to comment on the situation. Karamu House Executive Director Margaret Ford-Taylor assured me that the meeting had been very positive and that Hennessy proved to be a thoughtful person and sincere artist. She noted that vandalism was unfortunately common at Karamu House and that she didn't think it was directed towards Hennessy's work. I wouldn't question Hennessy before a performance, although when introduced to him, I noted he had an emotionally battered look about him.

In an interview with Hennessy on Friday, he spoke about the Wednesday meeting with me and his response to the situation.

He explained that he had thought the meeting was called because of the stolen equipment, but that it was never discussed. He explained, "A photocopy was made of

AFFORDABLE TREASURES

COLLECTABLES ▼ JEWELRY

ANTIQUES

FURNITURE

LINENS

ANXIOUS TO BUY!!

GLASSWARE

GARY BURTON E RUSTY ALLEN

216/521-7253

16806 MADISON AVE. LAKEWOOD, OHIO 44107

my performance request and given to everyone at the meeting. Margaret [Ford-Taylor] said some things to open the discussion. The first round of speaking was all about concern for the community. No one said 'I'. They said, 'Our community is really conservative,' or 'There are people in our city who can't handle this.' 'This is too big a jump.'

"Then Margaret said, 'Okay, we've got the community line, can we please speak personally?' And then we heard things like: 'Do we have to read this?' 'This is degrading and insulting to read.' 'Did you ever think of that? That just to read this is against my moral codes, and it's hurtful to me to read this.' There was one gay man who spoke. The only word he used to describe himself was homosexual, which really put him in a different gay community than me. He said, 'I'm a homosexual here and I've been here a long time. We don't do this.' He was definitely making a choice not to identify with any kind of a gay radical situation or even a gay community.

"So I responded that my goal was to stay as clear as I could in the language of my community about what I was looking for. My intention was never to hurt. I explained that I'm a body based artist, and I wanted to show the text through the body...that each orifice spoke differently. I also explained that I've been a performance artist for 15 years now. There has been nudity in my work for 15 years. The naked body is one of my prime mediums. There are thousands of artists working like I'm working. And you are saying that this entire genre of art which is one of the most happening genres of art, you are not going to do? And their position was, 'Yes, basically you're right, we're not.'

"I also explained that pulling the condom out of the butt is a multilayered image. One of the many things it is is a public display of safer sex practice. I put on the gloves. It is a condom. There is no germ transfer. He touches the condom; I don't touch it. It's a public display. There is a war against the display of these images."

When asked how they responded to all this Hennessy replied, "They could not hear anything. They could hear me, and they saw that I was a thinking caring person. And they kept hearing information that made

them feel I was a good artist. I also said it was an honor to be here with you and to be able to have this kind of a process. I told them my goal was to really make these bridges and that bridge building is in the work. I don't hold anything in the work so sacred that it can't be changed. I also told them that I run a community arts space, and I have rules about my space, so I understand about protection.

"Finally someone said, 'Are you prepared to change this?' And I said if I change it will you come? Because it doesn't sound like it is worth it to for me to change it. Because it sounds like whatever your morality and community is, I basically don't agree with. I don't believe that you have only one community which is black and Christian and goes to church. I believe you've got a lot of people and that by assuming there is only one community, they are held hostage by the morals of that community."

Hennessy did finally make changes in the piece. He explained, "I'm a site-specific artist. Here the site was not so much the room as the extended community around the room and Cleveland in general. I felt I did a community-based site-specific performance. I tried to read the community as best I could. If Rick had been naked it would have been wild and beautiful. But I totally got my point across by having him wear those little fetish shorts. And then when getting to the point where I normally pull out the condom out of his butthole, I explained to the audience what I normally do in my house. So I felt it became a multilayered image again, talking about community and sexuality. If I wasn't going to take the condom out of his butt, I wanted to add one piece of intimacy. So where I normally take the text out of his mouth with my hand, I took it out with my own mouth. That was my response to everyone saying it was not a gay issue. They had said, 'If you were straight or a woman, we don't do nudity. We don't do body parts, and we don't do taboos.'

I saw both performances of Hennessy's work, Heat: Act I, Mercurius. Hennessy uses dance visual elements, text and song in a balance in this piece he calls an “intensely personal performance investigating Racism and Violence from the perspective of a white queer man." He works through complex metaphors that allow space for the audience to formulate its own response in the process.

The piece opens with Hennessy entering in street clothes and introducing himself to the audience. He invites the audience to introduce themselves to someone near them that they don't know and answer the question, "Why am I here?" He exits to get into his costume while the audience performs its task.

FAX: 356-4100 (West)

FAX: 831-0953 (East)

RE

REAL ESTATE MORTGAGE CORP.

Thomas J. Rankin Residential Lending Specialist "Your Partner in Lending"

20575 Center Ridge Road

Suite 500

Rocky River, Ohio 44116

Office: 356-LEND (West) Office: 766-LEND (East) Office: 943-6000 (Lake) Pager: 736-9071

THE

CLEVELAND

CINEMATHEQUE

Cleveland Premiere!

THE FIRST ALL DRAG SCI-FI MUSICAL EVER!

Negos Space

FRI., 3/11 AT 9:30 PM & SUN., 3/13 AT 7 PM

FREE PARKING

ADMISSION EACH FILM $5

The Life and Times of

ALLEN GINSBERG

Cleveland Three Premiere!

Shows!

FRI., 3/25 AT 9:30 PM

SAT., 3/26 AT 7:30 PM

SUN., 3/27

AT 10 PM

421-7450

CLEVELAND INSTITUTE OF ART, 11141 EAST BLVD.,