Professor Dinwitz, The Art Instructor, strolls past Tamara's desk, scratching his unshaven cheek. His eyes are red and he reeks of cigarettes.
Tamara wrinkles her nose. She guesses that Dinwitz thinks he is Cool because he is a smelly slob.
"What is Performance Art?" Professor Dinwitz asks, waving his arms theatrically, "Performance Art must be something unique that's never been done before. It must capture your audience's attention. It must make a statement to the world. It should be the most meaningful, intense moment of your life."
Tamara sighs.Only 1/2 hour left of this class. She longs to get out of this room, the Art Barn, a huge, cavernous, black-painted studio full of easels, pottery wheels & pots, paintings and bizarre three-dimensional sculptures, such as the one made up of bones and animal skulls. "ART."
Everyone loves Art. It's the coolest. But "cool" only goes so far. You still have to stay in the boundaries. You can't break the law, offend the authorities, piss people off. Art is just entertainment, when it comes down to it. A way to sell toothpaste.
"Art," Dinwitz intones, scratching his armpit. "What is it, anyway? Is it some old moldy paintings, like the ones that hang from the walls down at the Art Museum? Or is Art something that comes from the very center of your being?"
Tamara isn't sure. She had hoped for the latter. She has hoped that Art would help her express the longings inside of her...he beauty that she senses and feels and can't express. The passion, and the desperation. It's the end of the millenium and the future hangs in the balance. Twenty years till the world's food supply runs out. And if the world doesn't run out of food... there's still the question of what will happen to people's souls? What kind of world will it be, with machines more powerful than people and no beautiful forests left to walk in?
What can Art do about that?
Can Art tell her what she should be doing with her life? What is life for, anyway? She's going to college, because that's what you are expected to do. She wishes she knew why. Can Art tell her?
So far, Art has mostly been a matter of great words and small results. Dinwitz intones of the Meaning of Art... and then assigns a project that has to be 10 by 15, using only primary colors. "You need to learn discipline," he tells them. Or he assigns a hypothetical magazine layout for a cosmetics firm. "That's the kind of work you'll get in the Real World," he tells them. "Get used to it."
"Get a friend with a video camera," Dimwitz tells them today, "and create some Performance Art: something outrageous, over-the-top. that your viewers will never forget."
Tamara leaves the class, sighing with relief.
Next comes Art History. "Art Treasures of the Metro," is the subject today.
"These are some of the greatest treasures of our civilization," says the Art History professor, who looks about as old as some of the Old Masters that flash across the screen. "These are our gift to the future." Rosy cherubs and muscled Biblical heroes, gold-haloed Madonnas and stodgy Dutch princes in black parade in quick succession across the projection screen.
"The centuries have not been kind to these masterpieces," he says. "Pollution, smoke, chemical fumes, the acids from the acid rain." He describes the efforts and expense that has gone toward preserving these priceless treasures.
"Go down to the Metro Museum this week, it's only a 45-minute drive on the expressway. That's your Assignment for this week. Go down and absorb True Greatness."
After this class comes Biological Science. An entirely different sort of class. No one expecting you to open up your head and spill out something profound & creative. Biology is quite simple, straightforward. It's full of completely emotionless chemical formulas--which can all of a sudden come together in a blinding epiphany: this is how Nature does it: this is how chromosomes replicate and leaves produce energy from the sun: a work of creativity more dazzling than a thousand Michelangelos.
Professor Rutherford lectures to a huge hall of students. An overhead projector shows a series of one-celled animals.
"These are called Diatoms," he says. The screen shows the circular forms, every one of them an intricate work of art more detailed than a Durer woodcut.
"And this is a cross-section of a common cabbage-leaf stem." Another exquisite form flashes on the screen.
"Every life-form," says Rutherford, "is a work of art that took billions of years to evolve to its present form." The students are scribbling notes as Rutherford starts to walk around the podium. He left his notes behind him. "And yet," he says, "man has thrown a giant monkey-wrench into the process of evolution. Did you know that every second, four species become extinct?"
Tamara is sitting on the edge of her seat. Many of the others are, too. No students sleeping in this class.
Rutherford walks about, waving his hands. "The rate accellerates every year. Every second, because of man's carelessness, unique lifeforms are disappearing into oblivion.."
The students , catching his sudden passion, sit up and take notice. Rutherford is an old hippie professor with his thinning hair in a ponytail. They say he used to be a student radical.
"It's an act of vandalism too stupendous to contemplate," he says. "It's as if every second, you were to go down to the Metro Art Museum and throw four Renaissance masterpieces into a bonfire."
Chills run up Tamara's spine.
Rutherford comes to the punchline. "And what are YOU going to do about it?" He whirls, facing his students with burning eyes. "You young folks are going to inherit this legacy. Will you let it go on? You're the ones who will have the power to stop it--or to turn your backs, and let it all slide into oblivion. What legacy are you going to pass on to the future? It's up to every one of us to make a stand."
His eyes look right at Tamara.. The long-banked fire of the radical 60's has ignited an unexpected spark. What are YOU going to do about it?
The flames still burn inside her as she walks out of class.
***
That weekend, she comes home to find her brother Tim on leave from his military unit. He's full of stories: "You wouldn't believe this asshole drill sergeant we had..." Weapons training: "I almost blew my hand off the other day." The terrible food. "It was enough to make a cockroach barf!"
When he finally falls silent, Father turns to Tamara. "So, how's school?"
"Oh, it's okay. We have to make a meaningful statement about the world."
***
Tamara goes down in the basement with Tim. They smoke a joint like old times. She sucks in a big toke.
"Hey, wanna cause some mayhem?" says Tim. "I'll show you how to wire an explosive charge."
"Sure." Tamara sucks in a toke. "Soon as we finish this joint." She isn't sure whether he's joking, or whether she is, or whether they're both serious.
"So it's like this," she says, releasing the smoke & leaning back into the ratty old chair. "The Art History prof's talkin' about the Priceless Treasures of Civilization, & then I'm sittin there in biology class & Rutherford's sayin' about how the real evolutionary treasures of this planet are bein' destroyed at, like, four per second. All so that the big companies can sell Pepsi & burgers & plastic things that you throw in a landfill."
Tim reaches for the joint. "Yeah, that's the fuckin' truth."
"So, maybe I there's a statement somewhere in THAT."
Tim sucks in another toke.
"Know what they said in Philosophy class? 'It's more important to stand for something,'" Tamara quotes, "than to live a long and meaningless existence."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Tim wants to know.
Tamara stares at the ceiling: the patterns formed by the water stains and the peeling plaster remind her of swirling amoebas and spiralling galaxies. When she gets stoned enough, she feels almost in touch with the awesome truths of the universe. The pathos touches her: her own insignificance and the fact that she belongs to a species that is threatening to send itself and so many other species into the abyss. Humans. Does Earth support intelligent life?
"Sometimes I think we're the last generation on this earth," she mutters.
And that's when all of it comes together. Performance Art. It must make a statement to the world. It should be the most meaningful, intense moment of your life.
She feels cold with sudden terror, yet her spirit burns with purpose. "Tim? Do you still have that video camera?"
"Sure, why?"
"I've got this idea for the most spectacular piece of performance art you'll ever see."
****
The Metro patrons stroll in past the big velvet ropes: men and women in coats and ties and high heel shoes. Moms with strollers. White-haired seniors. They follow the signs pointing to the Modern Art exhibit and the European Collection and the Renaissance Collection.
Velvet ropes keep the crowds at a respectful distance as the people stare in awe at the priceless treasures of western civilization: Titian and Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Uniformed guards stand in the corners, looking bored, surveying the crowd.
Suddenly a voice rises above the others.
"Hey! Everyone, attention please!"
A young woman leaps over the velvet ropes to stand in the forbidden area. "Don't anyone move! This is a piece of Performance Art!"
"Get the hell away from there," a security guard yells. He heads toward her.
"Don't come near," she screams, "I've got a bomb!"
The crowd freezes in terror, as she opens her jacket. Inside, she wears an amateurish-looking explosive device which appears to be made up of several cylnders, connected to wires and batteries.
"Jesus Christ." A guard speaks into a radio.
She moves up to the most valuable of the art pieces and speaks into a portable mike.
"This is a demonstration," she tells the horrified onlookers. "This is a piece of performance Art you'll never forget. I am going to destroy some of the most valuable treasures of western civilization. "
White-haired, wealthy patrons gasp in horror.
"A terrible crime, you say? Yes. And its purpose is to draw attention to the much greater crime that's happening all around you. Every second, four species become extinct. They represent millions of years of evolution. They took even longer than these slabs of paint & canvas up here." She waves the package of explosives in the direction of a Boticelli.
The guards are buzzing like a hive of bees. "Please don't move," one of them says into a bullhorn, "put down the bomb and we'll talk."
"Really?" Tamara thinks back to her work last term with Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network. "Can you stop the destruction of the rainforest? Can you get the auto makers to curtail global warming? What are you going to do to save your priceless treasures--your REAL ones, I mean?"
The guards shake their heads. "Put the bomb down, honey, and we'll talk about what's bothering you."
"I told you what's bothering me. What's bothering me is that the people in power care more about a bunch of dried-up paint than about the world they're passing on to my generation. What's bothering me is--"
A commotion interrupts her as a horde of SWAT team sharpshooters burst into the room. Patrons scream and fall to the floor. Tamara cringes back, bumping up against the priceless artwork. The trigger-happy sharpshooter's finger slips and sprays her with bullets--just as she releases the triggering mechanism of the bomb.
Tamara and the priceless artwork are blown to pieces. When the smoke and dust and noise and screaming stops, there is nothing left but a huge hole in the wall--and a starburst of blood on the floor.
In the midst of the stunned silence, a youth comes forward with a video camera. Choking back sobs, he aims the camera at the crimson starburst which is all that is left of his sister.
***
Within an hour the film will be delivered to the news stations. By that night it will be shown on every television in the country. The complacent working people, the business tycoons, the bored consumers will be shocked from their stupor. The complete, uncut footage will be copied and spread over every campus in the nation. Not since the murder of students at Kent State have the young people been so shaken. Soon the whole world will be forced to see the truth of its greed, its callous disregard for its true treasures, in comparison with its veneration of old plaster and paint.
But perhaps the message has come too late. In that case there will be only one work of art remembered in the 21st century. It will consist of a hole and a starburst. The name of this masterpiece will be:
"PERFORMANCE ART".
+++