'There's more to life than books you know...

But not much more' sang our Mozza in 'Handsome Devil', and this was made very clear to me today when I discovered that as I have suspended my PhD the Uni library has taken my borrowing privileges away. Thisdecision, though quite easily reversed it seems, is still making me all twitchy and shaky and lost. Should all be reinstated by tomorrow I hope, and in the meantime I have been playing around online and finding all sorts of inspiring folk and art and performance. Here's a brief selection of my findings for the day, in no particular order:

Vaginal Davis- 'Frequently in her stage shows Davis performs "shrimping", a slang term for toe sucking. On her tour with Margaret Cho she performed the "Ancient Shrimp Ritual" during which she would select a male volunteer from the audience, bind him to a chair, remove his shoes, slather his feet with whipped cream and cherries and would then proceed to suck his toes to the tune of Prince's "Cherries in the Snow".' (from Wikipedia). Violent Beauty:Sadomasochism and Performance by Catherine MacGregor, in which she describes her 2000 peformance, 'Catholic Sex': 'The moment of piercing my own breasts was for me a literalization of the moment where the Virgin is told upon Christ's crucifixion, "you will feel as though a sword has pierced your own breast." 'A documentary called The Human Canvas, featuring Kira O'Reilly who 'invited members of the audience to cut her as part of the performance', and Alison Newstead who's Housewife Suspensions have her hanging 'from hooks from the ceiling whilst first knitting, ironing and, for the final one, having a quintessential English tea party complete with scones, jam and cucumber sandwiches… '. Does anyone have a copy of this doco?

Hmmm... mutter mutter... shuffle around room looking distracted... struggle to find anything unique about own art rooted in white middle-class Catholic feminity and preoccupied with bodily fluids and breaking of bodily boundaries...