Blood Art and Activism

Reading Chris Bobel’s chapter “Radical Menstruation” of her book New Blood, I found myself wondering about the scope of the movement, both in time-span (as in, in the year 2016, is this still a movement with momentum), and how it has potentially spread to various forms of activism and activist action. As an art major, my main direction in seeking specific answers to these questions is, of course, art oriented. Specifically, my question became: how has the radical menstruation movement, and third-wave feminist action influenced performance art?

Performance art, and particularly American performance art, has strong ties to the second-wave feminist movement of the 60’s and 70’s. Coming out of a period of American art where the “in” style of artwork was minimalism (straight lines, machine made perfection, art about art and for art’s sake, and all around white and male), performance art offered a space in which female artists could use artistic action as a vehicle to engage directly with issues of immediate concern. Their art was not art for art’s sake, but art deeply tied to feminist ideology and their identities and sexualities as women.

In fact, I found myself a little surprised (although not majorly, given that the direct focus of the chapter was directed at specifically menstrual product activism) that the history of feminist artwork centered around menstruation wasn’t mentioned. (For a decent overview starting back in 1971 with Judy Chicago’s Red Flag, check out this link.) In fact, the radical cheerleading and other performative actions mentioned by Bobel in her text, such as the tampon applicator hat and “zap action” protests all have direct connections with performance art and collaborative art action.

Interior Scroll (1975), Carol Schneemann x

Compounding on this connection is the fact that one of the most important works to the history of performance art is considered to be Carol Schneemann’s Interior Scroll, in which the artist read text from a scroll pulled from her vagina. Knowing this, I really couldn’t resist exploring the contemporary connection between menstrual art and menstrual activism.

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Both art and activism have agendas, so where do they align, and where do they differ? Performance art is often thought of as radical and shocking, but is contemporary feminist performance art (and specifically menstrual performance), as radical in theme and message as those in the radical menstruation movement? A movement that is anti-capitalist, pro DIY, environmentalist, and health oriented seems to something artists can get on board with, but have they? Big questions, I know! And actually, not really questions that I can answer authoritatively at all, but I can look at some individual artists that are performing and making a name for themselves right now.

Performance art is a medium deeply connected to the body of the artist, and therefor I had thought that it would be fairly easy to find a feminist performance artist that uses their own body to deal with themes surrounding menstruation. It actually turned out to be fairly difficult. Most artists the appear after a search are either visual artists, or historical artists and works from the 70’s. I did find one artist, however, that appears to fall in line with the methods of performance art, with a heavy dose of humor.

Clown Car (2008), Jess Dobkin

Her name is Jess Dobkin, and she’s Toronto based with a style that incorporates humor and lightness into performances involving all sorts of bodily functions. Her works include putting faces on her breasts to perform a puppet show with them, lipsynching to Streisand and Diamond’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” as a duet between herself and her vagina (also sporting goofy stick-on eyes), a vaginal clown car, and her most known work, a bar at which pasteurized breast milk was served (for an article that has both a write-up of her Lactation Bar, and her artist's statement about both the specific work and her practice, click here). Her works that have to do directly with menstruation are Clown Car and Bleeding at the Ball. Neither of these works appears to be confronting the same targets of radical menstruators. Instead of aiming for DIY, low impact, low capitalist consumption and awareness of the ways in which menstrual products are harmful, Dobkin’s menstruation performances (at least from the documentation available) still seem focused on simply placing her menstruating body in a way that makes the audience confront the realities of menstruation. However, her work also fits squarely in line with the humor used by feminist activists described by Bobel -- “In-your-face humor that incorporates an element of shock to awaken consciousness”.

Casting Off My Womb (2013), Casey Jenkins
More info can be found here

This humorous approach to bodily performance is something that is fairly unique to Dobkin -- much of the feminist performance that has preceded her has been heavily influenced by ritual action and work-like action. Dobkin however, seems to take inspiration from vaudeville acts, general clowning buffoonery, and queer theater. This type of humorous approach allows both Dobkin and menstrual activists to create work that is at once accessible and confrontational, but not trivializing. I think this is where the common ground currently is. It doesn’t quite appear that Dobkin and other contemporary feminist performance artist’s goals are currently aligned. From my viewpoint, Dobkin’s work, and the work of other performance and visual artists (like the “vaginal knitter” Casey Jenkins) is still mostly focused on confrontation of public attitudes about menstruation (which is still very important, judging by the disgusted titles of news articles and “think pieces” about such work), and not the combination of both acceptance and personal health/justice focus of radical menstruators.

Obviously, there is more artwork and performance in the world than gets noticed by news outlets and online journals -- this blog post is not about saying there isn’t. But apparently there is a bit of a divide between the focus radical menstruation movement and contemporary feminist performance art. As two areas in which the body becomes an essential part of (often) individual and group political action, there is potential for a mutually beneficial relationship, one that I hope forms, or is already in formation!