Interviews

Interview with Jerri Allyn

Jerri Allyn co founded the performance art group The Waitresses with Anne Gauldin in 1977. As the group’s name implies, all its members were also working as waitresses, often to put themselves through art school. I sat down with Jerri Allyn, who kindly agreed to speak with me about her experience as a performance artist. Allyn said waitressing made her feel “like a piece of meat”, and as though her personhood was being ignored. Allyn, upon seeing Gauldin perform about her waitressing experience, could see that she was not the only one feeling this way. The Waitresses began guerrilla performances in restaurants to reach the public and make known their feelings and experiences with sexism in the service industry. Allyn told me she felt she could, to an extent, control customers’ perception of her. For example, dressing more provocatively or sexier led to bigger tips. This led Allyn to One Year Art/ Life Prostitute, in which she explored her position as a food server as a presumed invitation for sexual advances. 

The Waitresses’ work is powerful because they employed humor as a strategy to talk about women’s issues that were being ignored. This strategy was so brilliant because rather than make the public feel as though they were being ignored or blamed, they could lead the public to have difficult contemplations and conversations. The issues The Waitresses addressed, such as sexual harassment and gender pay inequity, were made entertaining and digestible. They created characters, such as Wonder Waitress, who stood up for waitresses in instances of harassment, and Waitress Goddess Diana, who signified perpetual feeding and servitude with 10+ udder-like breasts. I asked Allyn about the decision to use humor, and her response was that women learn to “make jokes for our own survival and preservation”. The Waitresses, while discussing their experiences one day, discovered that five out of six of them had been raped. Allyn said, “we live in a construct of some thinking they have a right to women… some [people] think payment equates to entitlement”. When it comes to difficult and serious conversations, Allyn has found that not only does “neutrality [work] better than anger”, but “pleasure activism” is better for one’s mental health. It is a form of self care. 

Sisterhood was the most striking and inspiring element about The Waitresses, as well as much of Allyn’s work. Women supporting one another is so important and so powerful. It emphasizes the fact that these issues facing women, such as harassment, assault, femicide, etc., that can feel so isolating, are systemic in patriarchal society. The Waitresses were a pioneering feminist performance group, paving the way for future women artists to continue activist work. These artists deserve more recognition in feminist history, as their contributions were incredibly significant and numerous. 

Interview with Annie Sprinkle

Annie M. Sprinkle is a performance artist who has used body fluids in her work for decades. She initially started as a sex worker, and became the first porn star to bridge into the art world. Sprinkle told me that she grew up in an artistic family, so she had plenty of exposure to art her whole life. However, she was never able to think of herself as an artist until her mentor and friend, Linda Montano, dubbed her one. Looking back, she feels she was always a performance artist, and to many artists there is no separation between art and life. It is all one.

I believe the most interesting aspect about Sprinkle’s performance art practice is the way it functions within the history of feminist performance. Much feminist performance is very careful to use the female body in a way that rejects viewer pleasure. Sprinkle’s work transforms this idea without opposing it. When I asked her about this, she explained that she could see that people desperately needed sex education. She “wanted to share [her] enthusiasm”; feminist work often falls into one of the two categories: pain or pleasure. While Sprinkle was accustomed to being viewed as a fantasy, which she had no problem with, she felt performance art would allow her to be seen as she really was. Her piece Public Cervix Announcement invited audience members to view her cervix with a speculum and flashlight after the artist peed and douched on stage. Sprinkle believes that “the female body will always be a great mystery… [the cervix] is a magnificent miracle- the doorway to life itself” (sprinkle). Sprinkle’s performance work allowed her to become a sex educator, and allowed people to become more comfortable with the female body.

I asked Sprinkle about the differences between sex work and performance art, and how audience perception and reception differed. Sprinkle said, “I enjoyed being eroticized and fantasized- the problem is some men need to learn better manners”. She wanted to break down the societal stigma surrounding female sexuality by exploring her own fantasies and pleasure rather than those of someone else. Sprinkle’s use of pleasure as an activist strategy has led her to assume an ecosexual position; she and her partner Beth Stevens have married both each other and different earthly and celestial bodies numerous times. The artist’s practice has helped raise awareness about the need for sex education, knowledge of the female body, and environmental issues for decades.

Cindy Rehm is a Los Angeles based artist who works in performance, video, and drawing. The female body and myth are two recurring themes she focuses on often. She began working in performance in graduate school. The artist first felt she was too shy to work in this medium, before experimenting with a quiet, intimate performance in which she stitched using hair. This kind of performance felt natural to Rehm not only because of her more introverted personality, but also because her painted and collage works were very process-based and dealt with accumulation and repetition. These themes could be transferred to performance in the form of ritual, and a kind of tension and energy that cannot be mirrored in any other medium is present in performance art.

The artist later discovered that her grandmother practiced Braucherei, a kind of healing ritual folk magic. She explained that while she grew up in rural Pennsylvania and did not have exposure to art in the typical sense, everyone in her family still made something. They had skills such as sewing and could create. This innate knowledge present on either side of her family is evident in her own work, even before she knew where it had come from. 

The intersection of feminism and witchcraft is significant to Rehm’s work. She is heavily influenced by Carolee Schneemann, particularly ideas of sacred objects, mysticism, and goddess culture. This influence is evident in the use of beets as metaphors for the heart or soul, and the way the artist heals these objects using her own body and the clothes off her back. Performance art is not widely known as an important contributor to feminist history, but those familiar with the topic know that it has been largely impactful. Rehm sees performance art as a space for women to truthfully portray the female experience to a generally empathetic audience.