Emerging from the educational programs at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, Feminist Art Workers incorporated techniques of feminist education into participatory performance structures. We addressed issues of community (Heaven or Hell?), violence against women (This Ain’t No Heavy Breathing and Traffic in Women: A Feminist Vehicle), and equal pay for equal work (Bills of Rights). Our performances took place in locations as varied as city streets (Pieta, Afloat), during protest rallies (Draw Your Own Conclusions: Know on 13), in coffee houses, art galleries and museums.

Klick and I will offer insight into this historic art work, the time period, and the Woman’s Building, an organization that has had a huge impact on the form and content of contemporary art. We will also have a sneak preview copy of our new 230-page book, Feminist Art Workers: A History, as well as the book, Sisters Of Survival, about the anti-nuclear performance group that I cofounded. Both books will be available for purchase at $20 (SOS) and $25 (FAW) – cash or check only. This is an excellent opportunity to see one of the most interesting Pacific Standard Time exhibitions and hear personal stories from two artists who lived the history.

I hope to see you on Saturday at 11 am at Otis College of Art and Design Gallery, 4500 Lincoln Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045. For more info, go to the gallery website: http://otis.edu/public_programs/ben_maltz_gallery/womansbuilding.html. There are all kinds of video interviews and other interesting stuff that can be found there. And it’s all free!

Also stay tuned for notice of a private tour of my other Pacific Standard Time installation at LACE in Hollywood, which closes January 29. You can always check my blog for information about what I’m up to and if you sign up you’ll receive occasional notices.

Thanks and I hope to see you Saturday!

- Cheri Gaulke

-Cheri Gaulke

More information:

On Tuesday, November 15th the Righteous Conversations Project will be screening two new media PSA’s created by Los Angeles Teens and Holocaust Survivors in an extraordinary intergenerational workshop taught by Cheri Gaulke that took place at Harvard-Westlake last year with participation by students from Harvard-Westlake, Crossroads, and Marlborough Schools.

The Righteous Conversations project, a pilot program that connects Holocaust survivors and teens in a dialogue of remembrance and social conscience, was founded last year at Harvard-Westlake School by five students with support from Remember Us, a non-profit organization that invites personal connection to the name of one child who perished in the Holocaust in the hope that young people will honor their memory by acting, in their names, for good in the world today.

Over a one week period, students worked in partnership with the survivors, using the narratives of survivors and the nature of their personal histories as a source of inspiration for creating new media messages about a contemporary issue that resonated with the workshop participants.

The screening of the media messages and a short film documentary of the project will take place at the Peter Fetterman Gallery, one of the pioneer tenants at Bergamot Station best known for housing a vast collection of classic 20th Century photography specializing in humanist photography. Featured at the event will be a premiere exhibition of photographs of the participants of Righteous Conversations beautifully captured by Paul Ryan, an artist who has documented California history and culture for decades. paulryanphotography.com

In this photographic exhibit, Ryan explores the meaning and nuance of these historic partnerships between young Californians and elder survivors, who were themselves young at the time of the Holocaust. These photographs commemorate the momentous encounter between teens and the last generation of survivors while celebrating the intersection of memory and social consciousness.

Following the screenings, the media messages will be gifted by the teens and survivors to organizations that work to advance the causes highlighted in each of the new media messages. Organizations who will be gifted at this event will be COLAGE, Hebrew Union College Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation, and  Uri L’Tzedek,

For further information please contact Samara Hutman at samara@remember-us.org or by phone at (310) 656-2806

The composer for my Peep Totter Fly installation at LACE is Wiley Webb. Wiley is a young talent who already has a good body of work available online at http://soundcloud.com/wileywebb. I teach Video Art at Harvard-Westlake School where Wiley is a senior. Last year he asked me if he could get involved with my student filmmakers by providing audio sweetening, sound effects and original scores. I was very impressed with his work and his professsionalism. I was already working with some of my just-graduated students — Nick Lieberman was the assistant director and Gabe Benjamin was the editor – so I asked Wiley to join the team. He put together a beautiful soundtrack – a rich layering of natural sounds, many of which he gathered himself, to accompany each scene. He then added a subtle but powerful layer of tones derived from a recording session with musical artist Ananda using her voice and instruments like a harmonium, frame drum and singing bowl. I put together this video documentation for Wiley to show off his music (although the final version that I went with is a little different than this – more natural less human-generated sounds). The sound is an important aspect of the installation. It causes the video to become mesmerizing (even for me who’s seen it a million times)! But to really experience it you need to go to LACE at 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028.

Peep Totter Fly was commissioned by LACE and is part of Los Angeles Goes Live: Performance Art in Southern California 1970-1983, September 27, 2011 – January 29, 2012, which is part of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980. For more info go to http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/.

- Cheri Gaulke

photos by Paul Redmond http://paul-redmond.com/

Here are a few shots from my performance Peep Totter Fly at LACE on September 27. Performers in white activated my wall of red high heels by putting them on and walking on Hollywood Boulevard. When they returned to the gallery they offered the shoes to the audience and all mayhem was unleashed as people tried on the red high heels. I’ve got shoes in women’s sizes 5-16 which means they fit men sized 6.5-17.5 or so. The wall of shoes is meant to be interactive and viewers are allowed to wear the shoes while in the gallery. I have found that men really get a kick out of this as they have been curious about what it feels like but have never had a chance to try on shoes that would fit them.

So I invite anyone and everyone to come check out the installation which will be open through January 29, 2012. The installation is more than a wall of high heels. It has a beautiful video of high-heeled legs walking through natural environments – slogging through streams, lavafields, beaches, geo-thermal sites and against dramatic vistas. It was shot in locations as varied as Los Angeles, Death Valley and Iceland. There’s also a lovely sound score that makes the video quite mesmerizing. For more info and the hours of LACE, go to http://www.losangelesgoeslive.org/. All photos in this post are by Paul Redmond.

- Cheri Gaulke

Video still from "Eclipse in the Western Palace" by Cheri Gaulke, 1976

On Sunday November 13, 7:30 pm, Los Angeles Filmforum and Otis College of Art and Design present Doin’ It on Tape: Video from the Woman’s Building. The screening is the 7th in the series Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 at the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd (at Las Palmas), Los Angeles CA 90028. Excerpts from two of my videotapes will be included in the program – Eclipse in the Western Palace (1976) and Our Lady of LA (1987).  To purchase tickets go to http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/209055.

Jerri Allyn and Alex Juhasz host this screening, and introduce video excerpts from 1971 through 1987, from the Woman’s Building and LA Women’s Video Center Archives (LAWVC). Video art, documentary features, and raw footage touch on the 1893 Woman’s Building at the Chicago World’s Fair, women artists in Southern California circa 1968-1973, feminist education, lesbian art, the goddess in the city of angels, violence against women and women fighting back, art collectives and art activism – with some thoughts on media archives. The program looks at some of the amazing media work created at the Woman’s Building and the LAWVC, usually on video, much of it not seen in twenty years or more, by many of the leading artists of the era. Featured artists include: The L.A. Women’s Video Center collective, Cheri Gaulke, Starr Goode, Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus, Susan Mogul, Sheila Ruth, Jane Thurmond, and more. The LAWVC was cofounded at the Woman’s Building: A Public Center for Women’s Culture by Nancy Angelo, Candace Compton, and Annette Hunt in 1976 and joined by Jerri Allyn in 1977.

This screening is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building on view at Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design October 1, 2011-January 28, 2012. Dr. Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College, mined the Woman’s Building video archives housed at the Getty during the research phase of Pacific Standard Time. Her essay, A Process Archive: The Grand Circularity of Woman’s Building Video, can be found in the Doin’ It in Public catalog. Jerri Allyn is an artist and educator who was instrumental inn the early years of the LAWVC. Her Debating Through the Arts performance was recently presented at LACE as part of Pacific Standard Time.

See http://www.otis.edu/public_programs/ben_maltz_gallery/womansbuilding.html and http://www.womansbuilding.org for more on the Woman’s Building and the exhibition.

In person: Jerri Allyn, Alexandra Juhasz, Susan Mogul, Cheri Gaulke, Sue Maberry, Kathleen Forrest, Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus (schedules permitting).

Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 will feature over 24 shows from October 2011 through May 2012. Alternative Projections is Filmforum’s exploration of the community of filmmakers, artists, curators and programmers who contributed to the creation and presentation of experimental film and video in Southern California in the postwar era. Film series curated by Adam Hyman and Mark Toscano, with additional contributions by guest curators and is presented in conjunction with the support of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980.

- Cheri Gaulke