Performance Art

Richard Jordan is a sculptor who wanted to decry what he perceived to be the systematic exclusion of black artists like himself from mainstream culture. Such a statement can't be made through sculpture, so Jordan decided to convey his message through a performance piece. He called it Missing Transparencies, a reference to the fact that slides of his work are regularly misplaced by museums and galleries. The title implies that the slides are deliberately "lost" as part of an institutional conspiracy against minority artists.

The engaging premise of the multifaceted electronic arts festival called the Electrical Matter is that today's video, synthesized sound and other electronic media implicitly honor Benjamin Franklin the electrical experimenter. The festival's participating artists are free to choose whether to relate their commissioned works to Franklin's many talents. On the video/performance bill presented over the weekend at International House, co-produced by the Neighborhood Film and Video Project, Scott Alburger offered some Franklin- related meditations while Jessie Jane Lewis presented works that derived from her own concerns.

A grunting, chicken-cackling saxophone player; a monologist with a hundred voices; a spidery-thin dancer with red fingers; and a film about spinning - this is not a vaudeville show that MTI Tabernacle Theater is presenting through Sunday. The people in the program fall under the intentionally hazy rubric of performance art, and they all have found a steady outlet for their unique talents at an experimental theater in New York called P.S. 122. The show at MTI, called P.S. 122 Field Trips, offers a representative sampling of some of the big names on the fringe.

The students' project is ambitious: designing a giant Monopoly game, with real people moving around the board, to raise the community's awareness of homelessness. The idea behind the performance piece is to make people realize how easily the comfort and stability of a home can be lost. Last week, 15 of the Jenkintown High School students working on the project gathered for a brainstorming session with their art teacher, Virginia McKenna. To prepare for the performance in January, they had to answer questions such as these: Should images of homeless people be flashed by a hidden slide projector onto the game board or onto the scoreboard of the gymnasium, where the performance will take place?

If it were you, in your house, with your family, how would the dance end up? What would you say? Would you reach for your crown molding, or sway with your mate in front of the fridge? Would you even let Amy Smith and Andrew Simonet of Headlong Dance Theater anywhere near your front door to create a performance out of your family's life and your living-room mess? And how about the 10 paying audience members who are scooping up tickets to see four Philly families do exactly that?

When Karen Finley walked onstage at the Painted Bride Art Center two months ago, she shed most of her clothing during the course of her performance, smeared her body with chocolate and sprinkled it with alfalfa sprouts and glitter. The performance created an unholy mess. At first, the audience laughed, amused to see an adult playing with food the way kids are told never, never to do. But as Finley's multiple monologues continued, as she became infused with the personae of an abused woman, an alcoholic mother, a dying AIDS victim, the mess became emblematic of the mess American society has made of whole segments of the population.

Here's a quick multiple choice. Performance art is: (a) a woman who covers herself with chocolate, alfalfa sprouts and glitter while delivering high-intensity monologues on sexual abuse, alcoholism and AIDS. (b) a man who combines physical comedy with an existentialist edge in a breakneck series of solo character sketches. (c) an unruly art form that's been at the center of a national debate about public funding for the arts, threatening to bring down the National Endowment for the Arts since 1989, when Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.)

The Pew Charitable Trusts has named this year's recipients of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts - a $50,000 "no-strings-attached" grant that artists can spend in any way they choose. This year's recipients, selected from among nearly 300 aspirants, are: In performance art, David Brick, Andrew Simonet and Amy Smith, as a collaborative team (sharing $50,000); Tobin Rothlein; Robert Smythe; Geoffrey Sobelle. In poetry, Nava EtShalom, Jena Osman, Bob Perelman, Lamont Steptoe and Elaine Terranova.

ADULT FILM stars Marilyn Chambers, Traci Lords and Ginger Lynn all had varying degrees of success transitioning into mainstream acting careers, but Sasha Grey may soon be the first porn star to become a crossover star. One thing in her favor is that porn essentially is mainstream now - available in massive quantities on any home computer. Grey is also versatile and introspective - good qualities in an actress - and she's already starred in "The Girlfriend Experience," for director Steven Soderbergh.

TRYING TO FIGURE OUT a "sculpture" that moves at 30th Street Station are Nicholas Thomson, 5, (left) and Elijah Florence, 6. The performance art, sponsored by the Painted Bride Art Center, was designed by Harold Olejarz and titled "The Commuters/Men in Suits. " Five people wore the sculpture suits and interacted with commuters yesterday.

PHILLY.COM is expanding its Philadelphia arts coverage with the launch of digital content from Art Attack, which was created out of a partnership between Drexel University's Center for Cultural Outreach and the Daily News , it was announced Thursday. Art Attack's coverage of local artists includes musicians, world music, film, theater, dance and classical, contemporary and performance art in Philadelphia communities. "Our new partnership with Art Attack will allow us to provide our readers with even more extensive coverage on the widest array of arts in Philadelphia," said Lexie Norcross, vice president of digital operations and director of Interstate General Media, parent company of Philly.com.

THE PHILADELPHIA Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe isn't just for the fall anymore. Beginning Friday, Live Arts will host programs all year, starting with "The Robot-Human Theater," a collaboration between Japan's Seinendan Theater Company and Osaka University's Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. The evening consists of two short plays starring both robot and human actors: "I, Worker" about a robot that loses its ability to work due to a mental illness, and "Sayonara," the tale of an android that reads a poem to a dying person.

Richard Vague is board president of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe Nick Stuccio has a bold vision for the future of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, the cutting-edge contemporary arts festival that just wrapped up its 16th successful year. But in building a year-round contemporary arts center on the burgeoning Delaware River waterfront, the producing director is doing something you might not expect: He's playing it safe. A recent report by the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center, "Set in Stone," suggests that too many arts organizations have rushed into expansion projects before establishing funding, a long-term financial plan, or even a well-defined mission.

If it were you, in your house, with your family, how would the dance end up? What would you say? Would you reach for your crown molding, or sway with your mate in front of the fridge? Would you even let Amy Smith and Andrew Simonet of Headlong Dance Theater anywhere near your front door to create a performance out of your family's life and your living-room mess? And how about the 10 paying audience members who are scooping up tickets to see four Philly families do exactly that?

BOB FRANKLIN was a man of diverse accomplishments.   Foremost among them was his enormous talent as a master printer of fine art, which earned him a national reputation. But he was also a drummer with an African flavor, a professional boxer with 13 fights and a star of the playground-basketball scene, where he liked to talk about whipping Bill Cosby when both lived in the Richard Allen Homes. Robert Warren Franklin, who worked with more than 200 well-known artists in 30 years at the Brandywine Workshop on South Broad Street, died July 20 after a brief illness.

THE FIRST DAY of classes at the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School last fall had "kind of an Oprah moment," recalled Jason Corosanite. All 250 of the school's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were gathered at its Broad and Oregon location. Each was presented with an iPad to use throughout the school year. "You could hear the shrieks for blocks," said Corosanite. Clearly, it's not every student who gets to start (as opposed to end) the school term with the chant "no more books.

Sunday Sound and vision The Pennsylvania Ballet presents Robert Weiss' Messiah , an interpretation of Handel's masterpiece, with guests the Philadelphia Singers featuring soloists Suzanne Ramo , soprano; Jamie Van Eyck , mezzo-soprano; Steve Sanders , tenor; and Levi Hernandez , bass. The program goes on at the Academy of Music , Broad and Locust Streets, at 2 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Friday, and 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $20 to $140. Call 215-893-1999.

FOR THE PAST several months, South Broad Street passers-by couldn't miss the mountain of garbage on the lot next to Broad Street Ministry, between Spruce and Pine, which looked like a postapocalyptic art project. That's where members of the Miss Rockaway Armada collective were busy constructing boats and floats out of other people's trash for a mobile public art exhibit called "Let Me Tell You About a Dream I Had. " Some of the structures are water-worthy and will set sail on the Schuylkill from the Walnut Street dock for a vaudeville-themed performance this weekend.

When Miranda July was in grade school, she'd strut around the yard at recess and say to her friends, "Dare me to do something - just dare me!" It wasn't that she was a "wild" kid, she explains. "It was more just wanting to be put in some absurd situation that would just be unthinkably shocking. And performative, somehow. " Like going up to the front of a movie theater, standing on the little stage and doing a soft-shoe. "I promptly got kicked out," she remembers, "and the movie hadn't really started yet. It was just previews.