Okay. Well, there was one piece we did. It was called
"This Ain't No Heavy Breathing," and the piece at
the time, it was part of a larger art framework of
art works in Pasadena. This particular piece, the
thing that we were interested in was, where do women
feel safe, and are you safe in your most private
world, but can you also be isolated in your most
private world. We recognized that--and also that
your most private world also may not be safe, for
people who experience--so at the time there were
certainly women in the work world, and a lot of
women obviously forever have had to work to make a
living. And you had middle-class women who may not
have been in the work world, who were more in the
home world, taking care of families. But so the
thing that we were interested in was, is home the
safe place? And for people experiencing domestic
violence or abuse of any kind at home, it could not
be. For women who wanted to have a bigger life than
being at home, it might not be a safe place or a
fulfilling place, and it could be a very isolating
place if they weren't able to express deeper aspects
of themselves or the capacity to be an agent in the
world in meaningful ways.
So what we did with that is we--and this is also from
a completely different world than you have today
with social networking, people making their lives
very public on the Internet; very different in those
days. So what we did is we took the phone book,
because telephone was--this was before people had
computers. We'd look in the phone book, and we'd
find someone with a woman's name. We set up our
phone so we could record on it, and we called them
and we said that we were Feminist Art Workers, we
were artists and we'd picked their name out of the
phone book, and we just wanted to call them to wish
them well. And at the time, the kinds of--there was
also a thing that would happen for women, which is
sometimes they would get anonymous phone calls or
threatening phone calls.
Some women would be--and this has happened for a long
time, people who were stalked, sometimes a stalker
would stalk someone on the phone. But also there's a
thing where the phone could be used for obscene
phone calls or threatening phone calls that would
make the home unsafe, as an intrusion from the
outside world, and so in making these calls, it was
a symbolic act to say, "There are women all over. We
relate to you because you're another woman," which
we knew would be seen as something probably stupid
by most of the women we called. If they weren't
feminists and didn't value that, that would be like,
"Who are these people, and why are they bothering
me?" But what would happen was when we called them,
the women who were listed in the phone book just by
a woman's name tended to be living alone, because
the phone books then, the phone number would be
listed under the husband's name, or else it would
say, like, Jack and Jill Smith.
And so we got in these phone conversations--some of
them were very touching--with women who really were
kind of isolated and lonely. So we recorded these
conversations. We thanked them for the interaction.
Then we set up a thing in Pasadena in that Old Town,
which at the time--now Old Town is shops. This Old
Town was the porno district and the red-light
district, so this was crime and prostitution. We had
a pay phone there, and we sent out postcards, and we
directed people to this particular pay phone. I
think it was on the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado
or something like that.
And when people got there, on the phone booth for a
few days we had instructions of what to do, and they
would call a number and on--this is in the era of
answering machines, which were revolutionary at the
time. Actually, Feminist Art Workers in the very
beginning, we had an answering service, which that's
what people had at the time if you wanted, where
live operators would answer your phone for you and
take messages, and you would go and pick up your
written messages. So this was just in the beginning
of answering machines. So we had some of these calls
on the answering machine, and people could stand
there on a corner in a neighborhood that was very
threatening physically. Like you wouldn't want to
stand on that corner very long, because of the fact
that it was a high-crime area and a little bit
scary. Especially if you're a woman you probably
wouldn't, but probably men wouldn't either--and
listen then to these really kind of wonderful
conversations between Feminist Art Workers and these
women we called, and there was a little intro to
it.
Then we also had it on--there was a series on
KPFK--that's the L.A. station; yes, KPFA is up
here--KPFK, the Pacifica station, called "Close
Radio," that was artist radio, and they also did a
whole thing of this. We had it on the air. And the
thing about this piece, where it is similar, is it's
saying in this work you take into
consideration--this is the link to organizational
psychology--as you create your work, you take into
consideration, what are the needs and interests of
your audience and of the people you're interacting
with? This was another thing that separated us some
from the men that were our colleagues in the art
world at the time, like Kim, whose name I'm blanking
on, with his body smeared with excrement. But we
didn't want to put people in the position of having
to hug us with our bodies covered with shit and
piss, essentially, or to do things like Paul
McCarthy going to the front door, ringing the
doorbell, and then shooting a blank from a gun and
scaring somebody profoundly. Instead we wanted to be
more of a force of creating connection and warmth
and increasing understanding, like to shed more
light than heat, I would say, and more a connection
on another level.
So there's that piece, that link in, that if you just
do work that's about "I want to express something,
and I don't care what it does to you," that was more
the traditional world. The link into the
organizational psychology is that if we really think
about the organizations we build that are the places
where we work, but they're also the places where we
educate people, we take care of the sick, we produce
things that people need, we run our cities out of
them--if you take into consideration the needs and
interests of the people who are doing the work, the
people they're there to serve in whatever way they
are, and allow for more voices and consideration of
all the voices in how you design things, you can end
up with things that are way more powerful than if
you're just trying to say, "Do it because I said do,
because this is it and I don't care I'm cloaked in
excrement, you have to hug me." I mean, I'm making
it more dramatic than--I'm trying to make a point by
being a little over-dramatic. There is a
relationship.
So the work of organizational psychology is to really
consider all the people, where are they coming from,
what are their needs and interests. How do you
engage them in ways where people come in common
cause, where they can find the meaning in something
that's bigger than their own endeavor, but that
their own endeavor is a big piece of it, and they
contribute the very best they can from their own
endeavor into something that is a shared endeavor,
and then it makes something that's benefiting even
more people? And how do you handle the power
relationships, which are fundamental in a feminist
analysis? Some of the feminist analysis in the
workplace is a useful one to have, but there are
other power dynamics beyond feminist analysis as
well. How do you support leadership and having
people be powerful leaders in ways that help move
things forward meaningfully for people, rather than
it being something that diminishes or impoverishes?
All of those things fit into that world, so it feels
like a privilege to get to exercise some of the same
things.
You know, another piece that I did early on that I
didn't tell you about that was just my own that the
Feminist Art Workers helped me with, because I'd
shared with you the blindness I had as a child, is
that I did a piece where I had people--this is in
our studio in Pasadena--I had people come together,
and I disabled each person in some way, or they
disabled themselves by choice. They picked, like,
are you going to not have use of a leg, not have use
of a hand? Are you going to not have use of your
eyes?
Candace was deaf in one ear, Candace Compton, and so
that was also something, because we shared this
thing where she couldn't hear so well, I'd had
problems singing. You could kind of see this thing.
So everybody had something that they were disabled,
and then together I grouped people who had different
disabilities, so that together they formed one whole
body and one whole capability, that group. So
together they would have somebody who couldn't walk,
they'd have somebody who couldn't use their hands,
they had somebody who couldn't see, but together
they would all have all the capabilities of one
whole body.
And then I gave them like instructions that was sort
of like going on a scavenger hunt or a treasure
hunt, where they had to leave the studio in this
disabled state all together, and one person who was
fully able to could drive, and then they had to make
their way to places in L.A. and find things and
bring them all together. And then the place where
they all met was in Griffith Park at the
merry-go-round. And then I had all these people--I
just loved it. It kind of reminded me of a
contemporary sort of Hieronymus Bosch image of all
of these people with these different parts of
themselves disabled, riding these merry-go-round
animals and going around. It was really a great
image to see, along with all these children and
families sort of wondering, who are these people?
But they brought all of their things they found all
over the city, and then all together they talked
about what was it like to not have the use, and that
they didn't have to struggle with that disability
alone. They could struggle with it as one whole body
together, and how do they move all together? That
piece actually is a lot of what I do every day in my
work, because none of us have--in an organizational
or work setting, we don't have all of it. We have
pieces of it.