Cultural politics in women’s performance art.
This book uses the work of British live artist and Showwoman Marisa Carnesky to showcase women working in radical ways. The term “Showwoman” introduces a new identity—a performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables shared experience. As Obsessions of a Showwoman explores this concept, it traces a trajectory of incredible and weird women at work, including showgirls, hairhangers, fire walkers, animal mesmerists, and more.
Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art in the last thirty years, and her practice as a Showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position in power and politics. Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair whose extraordinary skill and artistry are often overlooked.
Exploring contemporary and historical performance in popular and marginal entertainment forms, this work treads the margins of cabaret and live art, disrupts normative ideologies through the spectacular, and opens new lines of feminist inquiry through weirdness, absurdity, and provocation in live art and popular culture.
This book uses the work of British live artist and Showwoman Marisa Carnesky to showcase women working in radical ways. The term “Showwoman” introduces a new identity—a performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables shared experience. As Obsessions of a Showwoman explores this concept, it traces a trajectory of incredible and weird women at work, including showgirls, hairhangers, fire walkers, animal mesmerists, and more.
Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art in the last thirty years, and her practice as a Showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position in power and politics. Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair whose extraordinary skill and artistry are often overlooked.
Exploring contemporary and historical performance in popular and marginal entertainment forms, this work treads the margins of cabaret and live art, disrupts normative ideologies through the spectacular, and opens new lines of feminist inquiry through weirdness, absurdity, and provocation in live art and popular culture.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Foreword
Dominic Johnson
Introduction: Marisa Carnesky – Sorceress, Radical School Mistress, Showwoman
Eirini Kartsaki
Finding Marisa Carnesky
1. A Showwoman of a Certain Rage: Marisa Carnesky’s Bleeding Spectacular
Josephine Machon
2. Ballad of the Bloody Pearl
Daniel Oliver
3. Spectacle, Patriarchy, and Ghost Trains
Paloma Faith and Marisa Carnesky
4. Finding Marisa Carnesky
Liz Aggiss
The Cosmos of Showwomen
5. Marisa Carnesky, Showwoman
Roberta Mock
6. Earth as Genderqueer Showwoman
Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stevens, and Marisa Carnesky
7. Conquering the World with Hoops
Marawa
8. The Making of a Future Showwoman
Empress Stah
Conjuring the Weird
9. Weird Women
Eirini Kartsaki
10. Their Phantasmagorical Appearances
Tai Shani, Geneva Foster Gluck, and Marisa Carnesky
11. Penny Slot Somnambulist
Rachel Zerihan
12. Shape Changing: The Metamorphosis of a Showwoman
Vanessa Toulmin
Magic Blood, Mysterious Blades, and Women Who Show
13. Incredible Bleeding Women I
Rhyannon Styles, Livia Kojo Alour, Veronica Thompson, and Marisa Carnesky
14. Showwomen Who Risk It All
Lucifire, Lalla Morte, Miss Behave, and Marisa Carnesky
15. Incredible Bleeding Women II
Nao Nagai, H Plewis, and Marisa Carnesky
16. Her Spectacular Entrances
Marisa Carnesky
Radical Bodies of Work
17. From the Finishing School of Marisa Carnesky: Lessons in Doing It Together
Phoebe Patey-Ferguson
18. Finding Power in Pathos
Alex Lyons
19. The Coven
Amy Ridler
20. The Department of Feminist Conversations in Dialogue with Marisa Carnesky’s Live Archive
Mary Paterson and Maddy Costa for the Department of Feminist Conversations
Afterword: The Showwoman’s Carriage
Gilia Palladini
Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Dominic Johnson
Introduction: Marisa Carnesky – Sorceress, Radical School Mistress, Showwoman
Eirini Kartsaki
Finding Marisa Carnesky
1. A Showwoman of a Certain Rage: Marisa Carnesky’s Bleeding Spectacular
Josephine Machon
2. Ballad of the Bloody Pearl
Daniel Oliver
3. Spectacle, Patriarchy, and Ghost Trains
Paloma Faith and Marisa Carnesky
4. Finding Marisa Carnesky
Liz Aggiss
The Cosmos of Showwomen
5. Marisa Carnesky, Showwoman
Roberta Mock
6. Earth as Genderqueer Showwoman
Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stevens, and Marisa Carnesky
7. Conquering the World with Hoops
Marawa
8. The Making of a Future Showwoman
Empress Stah
Conjuring the Weird
9. Weird Women
Eirini Kartsaki
10. Their Phantasmagorical Appearances
Tai Shani, Geneva Foster Gluck, and Marisa Carnesky
11. Penny Slot Somnambulist
Rachel Zerihan
12. Shape Changing: The Metamorphosis of a Showwoman
Vanessa Toulmin
Magic Blood, Mysterious Blades, and Women Who Show
13. Incredible Bleeding Women I
Rhyannon Styles, Livia Kojo Alour, Veronica Thompson, and Marisa Carnesky
14. Showwomen Who Risk It All
Lucifire, Lalla Morte, Miss Behave, and Marisa Carnesky
15. Incredible Bleeding Women II
Nao Nagai, H Plewis, and Marisa Carnesky
16. Her Spectacular Entrances
Marisa Carnesky
Radical Bodies of Work
17. From the Finishing School of Marisa Carnesky: Lessons in Doing It Together
Phoebe Patey-Ferguson
18. Finding Power in Pathos
Alex Lyons
19. The Coven
Amy Ridler
20. The Department of Feminist Conversations in Dialogue with Marisa Carnesky’s Live Archive
Mary Paterson and Maddy Costa for the Department of Feminist Conversations
Afterword: The Showwoman’s Carriage
Gilia Palladini
Notes on Contributors