Reverend Billy & the Church of Stop Shopping:
<http://www.revbilly.com/> &
<http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20001122.ra&start="51:20.1">.
***** Jill Lane, "Reverend Billy: Preaching, Protest, and
Postindustrial Flanerie," _TDR: The Drama Review_ 46.1 (Spring 2002):
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_drama_review/v046/46.1lane.pdf>:
... How can artists address the devastating effects and casualties of
the new global economy, when the representation of power is itself
now nomadic, liquid, and on the move? CAE [Critical Art Ensemble]
contends that rather than stage opposition, our only viable option is
to create calculated "disturbance" in these networks of power. What
role then can performance play as a site of such disturbance? Bill
Talen's work as Reverend Billy offers one trenchant set of answers to
those questions,revitalizing political street theatre as a
sophisticated repertoire -- or arsenal -- of anticonsumerist theatre
techniques. Indeed, Reverend Billy offers us a model of politicized
"theatre disturbance" that follows, engages,and creatively speaks
back to the multiplying sites of privatization that have colonized
urban public culture. From his beginnings as a sidewalk preacher
protesting the corporate redevelopment of Times Square in New York
City, Reverend Billy has taken his theatrical activism to a range of
sites, most of which are what he calls "contested spaces": those
urban sites that have been recently commodified, or newly condemned,
to commercialization. In this vein, he has staged numerous "shopping
interventions" in which he and fellow artists perform in commercial
spaces themselves -- from the Disney Store to Starbucks -- in an
effort to intervene in (disturb) the seamless corporate architecture
and choreography of shopping, or to "re-narrate" them with memories
of the lives they displace. Talen also regularly lends the Reverend
to a range of staged "political actions" related to the destruction
or gentrification of local urban spaces, and of the social memories
which they house.... *****
--
Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>
* Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>