The Performing Archive
Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz

The following ten pages are the first selections from The Performing Archive to be published, a project of enormous magnitude. Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz assembled the original archived materials predominantly in years surrounding 1972-1982. The contents are currently housed at the 18th Street Arts Center, and are available to historians, artists, and viewers by invitation. The archives include extremely rare documents from feminist, activist, and performance art, as well as personal correspondence, which identify the artists’ respective relationship to the movement.

Here, Labowitz describes the invaluable contents, “All the research materials, magazines, articles, communications with government officials and media makers, and the international feminist community are encompassed in the archive. They are a cultural statement of the times. They are also probably one of the last generations of type written archives and hand written letters before the computer became the medium of communication.”

Restricted Access, the first exhibition from The Performing Archive, which coincides with WACK! Art of the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art opens this March and is open to the public. In this exhibition, the artists investigate the nature of an archive, and how they and others are being historicized. This was done through the individual perspectives of a select group of emerging women artists, most born in or around the decade in question. Participants included: Brienne Arrington, Cara Baldwin, Irina Contreras, Nzuji De Magalhaes, Anoka Faruqee, Zeal Harris, Micol Hebron, Anna Sew Hoy, Cory Peipon, Haruko Tanaka, Elizabeth Tremante, and Ginger Wolfe.

— interReview

Letter to Cheri Gaulke from Suzanne Lacy, handwriting by Lacy/Gaulke
Letter to Gislind Nabakowski from Suzanne Lacy	Workshop/course proposals by Leslie Labowitz, circa 1978
Suzanne Lacy, Ti-Grace the dog, and friend, photo by Susan Mogul circa 1972; Judy Chicago in Feminist Studio Workshop, photographer unknown	Nancy Angelo, MFA thesis discussion of Ariadne and the Incest Awareness Project, circa 1980
Ariadne: A Social Art Network, organization outline and upcoming events, 1978
Program from Feminist Perspectives in Pornography, first national conference by Women Against Violence and Pornography in the Media (WAVMP) 1978
Suzanne Lacy, Barbara Smith, Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden, article for PSA Magazine, author Larry Grobel, circa 1977

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