[csaa-forum] KAREN FINLEY at UNSW

[James Donald]

UNSW Media Film and Theatre Special Event
Friday 26 May 2006 11.30 a.m.
Webster Cinema (Room 327)

George & Martha
politics and performance
Karen Finley

Karen Finley is a New York-based visual and performing artist, a 
writer, a musician, an actor and much else.  Her  visceral, 
transgressive performances and installations have been exhibited 
internationally.  Her books include Shock Treatment, Enough is 
Enough, Living It Up, Pooh Unplugged, A Different Kind of Intimacy, 
and Aroused.  Her must recent publication is George and Martha (Verso 
2006), an illustrated novella about a romance between George Bush and 
Martha Stewart.  Finley has recorded dance and techno beat music with 
seething lyrics, and taken part in musical collaborations, theatrical 
productions and film and television appearances. She has been 
involved in various American institutions: the 1998 Supreme Court 
case, NEA VS Finley with 3 other artist plaintiffs, a pictorial for 
Playboy, and an award as Ms Woman of the Year. She has been awarded a 
Guggenheim, and many other fellowships.  Kaern Finley is an Arts 
Professor in Art and Public Policy at Tisch School for the Arts at 
New York University.

At UNSW Karen Finley will be presenting a performance/lecture based 
on George and Martha. The story is about a mythic, illicit, sexual, 
love-hate affair between George Bush and Martha Stewart.  They meet 
in a seedy motel room on the night before the Republican National 
Convention. Their affair goes way back, before George stole the 
election, before Martha built an empire on fascist domesticity. As 
usual, George numbs his pain over waging perpetual war with cocaine 
and the promise of kinky sex. Martha is forced to take a long view of 
her life as she suffers the public humiliation of corporate scandal, 
on the brink of going to prison.

'I will perform selected texts with the illustrations of their 
rendezvous projected. The novella will be discussed in terms of a 
nation during war, a post-modern text, the relationship to the 
original George and Martha Washington, an appropriation of George and 
Martha  from Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.   But for 
further contemplation I consider how America lives through the legend 
of George and Martha, and how their relationship becomes a national 
narrative. I will also discuss the concept of parody, the 
appropriation of a collective knowledge for influencing critique of a 
disastrous presidency. There will be a discussion and Q and A.'

'Scarily hilarious... Nobody's mind works like Karen Finley's.'
- Amy Heckerling, director of Clueless


PS 
Dennis del Favero's presentation Nachtraglichkeit: an aesthetics of 
immanence and trauma, previously scheduled on 17 May, will now take 
place at 5 p.m. on Wednesday 24 May in Webster 327.
-- 
Dr James Donald
Associate Dean (Education), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Professor of Film Studies, School of Media, Film and Theatre
University of New South Wales
Sydney
NSW 2052
Australia

Telephone	(02)9385 4858
Mobile		0433 126445
Facsimile		(02) 9385 6812

International
Telephone	+612 9385 4858
Mobile		+61433 126445
Facsimile		+612 9385 6812


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