Self Portrait 78 and 83

1978 Berlin Boys

Tom Joslin and Mark Massi were on a bowling team with me in the fall of 1977, calling ourselves the Berlin Boys in homage to Iggy Pop's The Idiot and David Bowie's Low lps. We took the bowling league seriously, as did other teams--one of which bought the from-the-catalogue bowling outfits. The Berlin Boys went with hand silk-screen tees. One of my scars comes from a bowling competition, as I stubbed out onto the back of my left hand a cigarette, standing at the scoring desk of the bowling lane before my turn to bowl.

October 1978

The day of a performance planned for Marie Thibeault's studio party, I was practicing my poses, working throughout the day with at least two packs of Polaroid film. The white wall with black ties and tape allude to the photo documentation of actions by the the Viennese artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I'd bought a catalog the summer of 1977 at the gallery, Rene Block, which represented Joseph Beuys and Schwarzkogler.

First Half of 1978

Using a Polaroid camera to document myself, my actions, and my transformations, instead of a Kodak Instamatic or more rarely a 35mm camera, as i had used previously, began in the fall of 1977 in Florence, Massachusetts. Living with Mark Massi and Tom Joslin [see "Silverlake Life"] that fall, I first used a Polaroid Land camera then a One-Step SX-70 to capture my ManicPanic 'Peacock Blue' color hair. Mark shot the Land camera images and I took the One-Step shots, using a ten-second self-timer. the Land camera shots are the upper top left of the left-hand image. "Look, I was already a pillow biter!" These Land camera images began a year-plus of performances for the camera, steps for the One-Step, about two hundred in these four snaps.
The One-Step SX-70s continued with my move back to San Francisco, arriving "home" on New Year's Eve, 1977/78. While New Year's Eve was spent at a friend's apartment above 18th & Castro, by the end of January I was on Pierce Street, just off Duboce Park. 1978 is the first time in 4 or 5 years I live one full year in one place; not just one city, but one place, apartment...flats, as we call them in SF. One year + one flat = 1978.

One of my main causes of concern is that I feel I have no concise theories similar to Rudolf Schwarzkogler’s “Art as experience training and as the destruction of all established ideas about life... painting as therapy... Art is a cure against addiction... chains of experience.” [Nov. 22, 1978]

Identity Is the Crisis Can't You See

I honor the life of Poly Styrene, who passed away from breast cancer complications [http://www.spinner.com/2011/04/26/poly-styrene-dead/]. The performance piece of falling from a skateboard [see Jan. 7 entry] was preceded by my playing "Identity" by Poly's band X-Ray Spex while I changed into grey tights. I wore the tights under my jeans; I would later shred the tights from my body after the piece went south, interrupted by an audience member who didn't want to watch me throw myself from a skateboard agaisnt the concrete floor of Marie's studio.



In an entry of November 6, 1978, I write: "I ignore my role. I fall, consciously, into the Poly Styrene syndrome - basic paranoia...I need to look out for self. No, I need to be more conscious." Wrestling with whom I should be, much as Marianne Elliot-Said would more seriously be, as it turned out.

Stand Tall 'Cause You're An Art Student

The billboard paper-background series is early October, whereas the red t-shirt Polaroid is from a series shot in two packs on the day of a performance, described in an earlier post, at which I attempted to capture an image of my falling from a skateboard. The red t-shirt series resulted in about eight shots that remain, playing with the motif of 'tying off' and intravenous tubing, imitating images from Actions in the mid-sixties by Rudolf Schwarzkogler.




October 1978 "Nails in wall under board, similar to bondage wall, to hand ropes, objects for props for photos"