SF Moma: Space Time Sound—The Seventies

SF mOms Space Time Sound The Seventies Robert Rtkins Until recently, the response of museums to performance art has been marked by fear and loathing, paranoia and ambivalence. Given the anti-commodity orientation performance art has traditionally embodied, this comes as no surprise. No longer subversive, the institutionalization of performance art has occurred with the swiftness and ubiquity of a tidal wave. The late seventies brought the academic stamp of approval with instruction in performance and its history in numerous art schools and university art departments. Codification comes in the form of texts by RoseLee Goldberg, articles by Moira Roth and recently published anthologies by alternative spaces like Toronto's Art Metropole or San Francisco's La Mamelle, Inc. Commercial viability is insured by artists' use of booking agents and the sale of documentary artworks . Possibly the ultimate irony is provided by the newly revivified Life Magazine'sproclamation that "live art" has indeed come of age. Now we have the museum-organized group performance retrospective. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Space/Time/ Sound 1970s-A Decadein the Bay Area is a show of gargantuan proportions and galling chutzpah. While the credentials of the "codifiers" mentioned above attest to a longstanding interest in performancs, the museum's record in this area is checkered. (Most of the artists featured in the show have received little support from the museum and currently the rotunda, the museum's only real performing space, is being overhauled as a sculpture court.) As far as I know, this exhibition is the first undertaking of this scale by a major museum. I doubt that it will be the last. Space/Time/Sound showcases the work of twenty-one Bay Area artists, mostly conceptualists , Active locally during the seventies. Richard Alpert, Ant Farm, Paul Cotton, Peter D'Agostino, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Suzanne Helmuth and Jock Reynolds, Mel Henderson , Lynn Hershman (founder of the Floating Museum), Paul Kos, Stephen Laub, Tom Marioni (Museum of Conceptual Art), Jim Melchert, Linda Montano, Bill Morrison, Jiri Pomeroy, Darryl Sapien, Alan Scarritt (Site Gallery), Bonnie Sherk (The Farm), T.R. Uthco and John Woodall are the artists represented. Virtually all of the exhibited artists have, at various times, created performances , videotapes and'installations, although approximately one-quarter are not performance artists in the sense of making art involv-, ing personal interaction with a live audience. To many of us, Space/Time! Sound looks like a postmortem for the seventies. Certain key art makers are omitted-Bruce Nauman, Dianne Blell, Margaret Fischer, Joe Ress, Joel Glassman, Susan Wick, Anna Banana and Bill Gaglione-but it's not a bad sampling. The crucial omission is that of art. A few recreated installations and performances and non-performance related videotapes don't fare badly in this documentary context, but many performers are represented only by documentation-and the quality of that documentation is generally execrable. Performances of note are encapsulated in a few small PR-style photographs totally inappropriate for exhibition in an enormous gallery. Others, such as Stephen Laub's elusive slide projection performances in which he merged with autobiograph24 ical photographic imagery, have been essentially , perhaps inevitably, falsified through video recreation. The key to the museum's exhibition strategy is the show's historical nature. One tradition-. al function of a museum is to conserve art. In the case ofSpace/Time/Sound/this means the conservation of information about ephemeral art works and events. The show is really designed as a book at what looks like minimal cost. Unfortunately, the catalog will not be available until long after the show has closed. It promises t.o be extensive. Given the kind of interpretive material available at the exhibition , it also promises a standard biographical approach incorporating these artists into a linear vision of the history of sculpture. The unfathomable lack of contextual material provided helps to guarantee the shows unpopularity, as well as its total unintelligibility to a general audience. (Remember that this is the museum which premiered Judy Chicago's Dinner Party to SRO crowds, a museum where attendance figures are scrutinized very carefully.) In one gallery, for instance, Bonnie Sherk recreates her installation , Living in the Forest. An outdoor...