Lucky Pierre was a band whose music has been best described as a mix between punk rock, jazz, and country all played by people who had no idea how to play any of those genres. The band was part of the surprisingly fertile Connecticut College music scene of the early '90s — a scene that would later go on to produce the pride of New London, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. 

Lucky Pierre arose from the ashes of Mavis, a band with a decidedly heavier sound, in 1993. Formed by guitarist and vocalist, Luke Cavagnac, guitarist Andrew Wagner, bass player, Aaron Novik,  and drummer, Benny (the Bayman) Erickson, Mavis had hit a decent stride and was playing some good gigs until Novik moved to Mexico and Bayman graduated leaving Cavagnac and Wagner to pick up the pieces. 

Thankfully Connecticut College was swarming with musicians and the two guitarists quickly fell in with drummer, Jay Sitton, and bass player, Kevin Stafford. Stafford, a "properly" trained bassist from Texas brought a refinement to the new group and Sitton brought a mix of talent on numerous instruments. Cavagnac and Wagner dropped the distortion pedals (for the most part) and Lucky Pierre was born. 

The band quickly began writing and before long they were playing out all over the northeast and recording their first album, "Soundtrack to a Life of Crime," with fellow Connecticut College student, John Gray, at his home studio in Waterford, Connecticut. 

With the first album out the band gained momentum, playing many shows in New York City and Cavagnac's hometown, Northhampton, Massachusetts as well as plenty in New London, Connecticut, the band's home-base. 

As the 1994 school year opened Mavis bass player Novik, returned from Mexico. Lucky Pierre's new sound intrigued the intrepid musician Novik and the band searched for some way to get him in the band. Though Stafford had settled in at bass, Novik was more than amenable to trying out new instruments and the band began rehearsing with him on saxophone. Though he had never played the instrument before that didn't stop him and Lucky Pierre's sound continued to evolve. 

With Novik back in the band, many possibilities opened up as both he and Sitton were multi-instrumentalists. New songs featured the two switching between drums and keyboards and throwing in saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and even some banjo here and there. With Stafford's upright bass sound holding down the structure and Cavagnac and Wagner's guitar interplay setting an eery mood for Cavagnac's vocals, things were clicking along nicely and a second album was planned. 

The Connecticut-based crew hooked up with John Lyon's California-based Reality Control? Records and recorded "Mutiny on My Bounty," their second full length album in Santa Barbara (Goleta actually) during a California tour. With the new rich sound the band picked up more momentum and with the help of sometime manager, Mahmood Shaikh, toured all over the country and flirted with a few "major" labels. 

The end of the 1995 academic year posed the first challenge to the band as Cavagnac and Wagner graduated, with Wagner departing the east coast for his home-state of California and Cavagnac heading back to Northhampton. Novik, Stafford, and Sitton remained in New London to finish their studies. Despite the scattered natures of its members, Lucky Pierre continued to write, play, tour, and record throughout the next year. Unbeknownst to the band they would play their final show as a full band that year at the late, great Manhattan Knitting Factory. That show would feature the band playing a number of songs that were never officially recorded and turned out to be some of their best.  

Euphoric, dynamic, and downright fun, Safety Escape, the debut LP from Bainbridge Island, WA’s Erica Cooper bursts from the speakers in a cavalcade of enchanting melody and joyous musicality. Fusing her classical and jazz background with a newly discovered love of pop melody and EDM production techniques, Cooper has crafted a record that is at once immediately engaging and technically virtuosic.

Cooper grew up in a musical home, enrolling in music school as a classical vocal major. Halfway through the program she switched to a study of jazz vocals; “I was trying to figure out what sound suited my voice best, and just soak up as much music information as I could” she explains. After graduation Cooper was still unsure about which musical path to follow. The course came clear when she got a job at a local music store and teaching vocal lessons. Her students, mostly young girls, gave Cooper a crash course in pop music. “I started to notice patterns in the music,” says Cooper. She immersed herself in a study of pop songwriting techniques, chord structure, and melody.

Around this time, Cooper discovered audio recording programs Audacity and Garage Band. She became obsessed with capturing found sounds: dishes breaking, water droplets, and song doodles and ideas. Cooper was introduced to producer Alek Edmonds (Macy Gray, Goo Goo Dolls), who began teaching her the ins and outs of ProTools and helped her assemble a home studio. Around this time Cooper happened to attend a performance by Grimes and was inspired. “Seeing a woman singing, producing, writing, and performing all of her own music by herself on stage was so incredibly inspiring” says Cooper.

Armed with a newfound sense of purpose, Cooper got to work. “I was dealing with the loss of a very important relationship at the time” says Cooper, “so I was drawn to recording and audio because of the element of being able to keep something forever and freeze a moment in time.” While each track stands as its own, there is a broad theme of dissociation to the record. “The title of the album comes from personal experience with a specific type of psychotherapy called EMDR which used to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder” she explains. “Music in general – and making this album specifically - was a safety escape for me.”

Working with Edmonds and a host of talented musicians including Sam Miller (piano, bass, synths), Matt Singler (drums), Shohei Ogami (guitar), Josh Dawson of the band Timbre Barons (lead guitar) and string arranger and violinist Andrew Joslyn and the Passengers String Quartet. Paul David Hager mixed the record and the legendary Howie Weinberg mastered it. Together, they crafted a record that is both undeniably fresh and immediately familiar. “I hope people can feel some sense of comfort and hope from my music” says Cooper, “and that, just maybe, it helps them make some sense of their own personal journeys, and – if they need it – can be their own safety escape.”
ericacoopermusic@gmail.com
www.ericacooper.com

Horror is a Progressive Black/Death Metal (Gray Metal) band from New York City that began in 2009. 

Horror officially began when two demos were released online in 2010 through various social networks and websites on the internet. 

In mid 2011 Horror released the first official EP 'Backwards Knife' featuring improved production over the demos and an obscure take on the typical Black/Death metal sound focused on "subtle brutality" and aggressively haunting vocals. 

Shortly after, in late 2011, Horror released the first full length release 'Ignorance Is Death' featuring higher production values, a longer length and more diversity over the first EP. 

A third full length release 'Artificially Alive' was released by Horror in July 2012 and featured 8 new tracks with a noticeably less colorful cover art than the previous. 

At the end of Spring 2013, Horror released another full length,"Everyone Trying To Kill You". The single for this release was the title track. 

"Kill Me, I'm Them", considered to be the first "album" release by Christopher "Horror" Ferreira (The sole member and mastermind behind Horror), was released March 11th, 2014 featuring another 12 tracks to add to the ever expanding Horror library. 

February 10th 2015, the second official album "Animus" was released, featuring another 8 tracks continuing to expand the already large Horror library. 

October 30th 2015, "Irreversible" the second official Horror album was released. Featuring 9 tracks and according to Christopher Ferreira, "A new approach to the structure and composition of the album, yet an exploration of everything Horror has done before".

Horror and it's 78 officially released songs are still incrementally receiving recognition from underground metal blogs, "webzines" and social media. 

The third official album is set to release at the end of 2016 or early 2017.

 Philadelphia is a special place, as far as its density of outstanding musical talent is concerned, is definitely one of the most bandied around platitudes of the last two years. What is easily overlooked, however, is that the musical trend couldnt be more varied despite the numerous connections. Now, Rahsheed, alias Maylay Sparks, presents the New Genre of Futuristic Hip Hop  !! His excellent reputation has so far almost exclusively been enjoyed in insider circles is mainly due to the fact that most of his productions to date have only been available as imports. His band, Rahsheed And Illadvised, of which Baby Blak is also a member, has already been firing up underground heads for years. Together with The High & Mighty, Rahsheed was also one of the founders of the Eastern Conference label in 1995. In the meantime, he has relocated to Copenhagen and produced Gray Matter, his first album under his own name. I came to Copenhagen to perform with BoulevardConnection , The Roots , Last Eemperor, DJ Miz, Dilated Peoples and more, at the Roskilde Festival. During the performance, I jumped off the stage and broke my leg. Thats how my stay was inadvertently extended. Since then, Rahsheed has become firmly anchored in the hip-hop scene there and has started a family. His musical output has once again increased in quality. The twelve tracks on Gray Matter are beyond a doubt among the best that hip-hop has to offer. His universal musical approach has fallen on particularly fertile ground in Denmark. Maylay Sparks has achieved this in a particularly impressive manner. His tracks tower above the usual hip-hop standards, far ahead of the densely occupied pack. For me, it was clear from the outset that I wanted to structure this project as simply as possible. Hence the title, Gray Matter. It is in tended to affect people in a very direct way. Rahsheed produced some of the songs in the USA with the help of Malik B (The Roots), Omni, DJ Jaz and Big Jim Slade. The rest of the tracks came about in Cph., with Context , DJ Noize and The Prunes. The twelve tracks sound suitably multifaceted, too. Despite the many co-producers, Rahsheed never lost sight of the real aim of producing a hip-hop record. In the meantime, he has already begun working on some new projects a combination of soul and hip-hop elements. New productions under the name Maylay Sparks are also already being planned. These include Legend Of My Own Mind, a band brought to life in conjunction with DJ White Shadow of Norway. Work will therefore not be running out too quickly for Rahsheed. After already releasing 15 singles under various names, Gray Matter , the Ill Collabo ( Hotshit/Sony), and Flaskworthy are among the first records to be marketed worldwide. It was time to take this step. Hip-hop is much more than just music for Maylay Sparks. That much is clear in each and every song. 

Sir FIX started DJ-ing in the early nineties at private parties organized in various basements, abandoned warehouses and private houses. Influenced and helped by his older friends living in the western European countries, as well as his early involvement as a DJ in one of the first private radio station in his town, soon he started collecting vinyl and CDs and started playing across all main clubs in his hometown. 
Later on, he got more into house and techno and focused to introducing this new sound to the clubs he played. People of all ages started following and supporting the music and this young growing house & techno scene. Backed by his friends and followers, he started his residency at the Millennium Club – a venue with a huge capacity where for the first time in town he booked a real underground DJ, Mike Parsons. Mike was one of the owners at Surreal Records and Eukahouse, a subdivision of Marco Lenzi’s and Nils Hess’s Eukatech. Mike introduced the proper London underground house sound and brought up names such as Eddie Richards, Terry Francis, Pure Science and many more, to his and the scene’s attention. Following to Mike’s unforgettable party and driven by this initial success, the street talks and the positive feedback, along with his friends, sir Fix continued booking other DJ’s from the London and Swiss scene. This period is known as the beginning of a small but very successful underground scene that gained the deserved attention with the media and more importantly, with the open-minded people who were hungry for something new. 
SirFix, continued DJ-ing and experimenting with music styles in his college days as well and the turning point happened when he moved to live and study in Prishtina. Having his pair of decks and record boxes with him, and more importantly, meeting like-minded enthusiasts who soon became his friends and partners-in-crime, he started playing at the most important venues of that period in Prishtina and all over Kosova. The scene was progressing insanely fast and logically, the people behind this massive success had to put a structure in it, and this is how UNDERSOUND collective was born. UDERSOUND was a group of DJ’s, producers, actors, designers and other artists and supporters, who got deep into shaping the clubbing in Kosova. Headlined by DJ’s such as Goya, Toton, Baton Domi and Sir Fix and backed by club owners, promoters and their friends and supporters, UNDERSOUND grew into a proper sound system that managed to book the most influential house and techno DJ’s and producers of that time. Dj’s like Eddie Richards, Terry Francis, Mr. C, Dave Mothersole, Richard Gray, Gideon Jackson, Chris Carrier, Adultnapper, Grant Dell, and many more, started playing on regular basis and were the greatest influencers in shaping what today is known as Prishtina house sound. This euphoric period is often remembered and praised even nowadays, almost 15 years later. 
After 3 years spent in Prishtina and over 200 bookings during this period across the Balkans, sir Fix went on living and working in Zurich, CH where he got introduced to one of the most established club scene in Europe at that time, next to London, Berlin and Ibiza. This period helped him evolve with the music he plays and how he treats his audience on the dance floor. 
With over 20 years in the dance music scene, sir Fix is still very passionate about the music, willing to play a 10 hours set or to enjoy dancing on the dance floor with like-minded people till early in the morning. He plays at various clubs across the Balkans and on festivals such as Future Fest, Ultra Fest, Urban Fest, Dance for Peace etc. Fix is always in the mood for a gig, no matter if for 50 or 5000 people, focused on the decks and making sure that the vibe is properly transmitted on the dance floor.

Something about the Project: Devanāgarī.

__

"Why Devanāgarī?"

Devanāgarī is a concept, leaked from the Hindu conceptions, which literally means: "sacred expression." It immediately makes clear the reason why I decided to give this name to this composition of people, souls, instruments that find they're maximum sacredness in the Music, their best way to pray something ascetic, ancestral, divine. All we need to cling to something ethereal, abstract, and then make it real: it's part of the combination of strength/weakness that always damns the Human Being. Men are so weak that they need something to be strong, to prove how their apparent strenght makes something real, at least in their eyes. Whether a Christian God, a Pagan God, any philosophical ideology or simply Music. This project is the representation of purity, innocence, "literary childhood" which was mentioned in the first English Romanticism. It's the wilderness where you can run free with your mind and get lost in total denial of every system, every scheme, every rigid structure. Devanāgarī has a logo. A black and white background, connected to the Taoist philology: the good and the bad, two sides of the same coin that must find their equilibrium not in gray, but in the acceptance of both shades of life. There's a tree, then. The tree of life: turned upside down. It's said that everything, if turned upside down, gains 50% of extra beauty. And it's our way of seeing things: we turn our lives upside down, we dismantle every taboo, so that the life takes 50% of extra beauty and makes us more peaceful living, such as Birds. This is the third element: the birds. Perched on the branches of the overturned Tree of Life. They represent our essences. Birds that live, ready to fly, normally perched, defying every law of physics, to an overturned tree. Birds that obsverve, one another, as to create a symbiotic relationship between them. And then there's the "3", on which we play a lot. The "3" as the numerological significance: the perfection of things, the divination of what it represents. For us, our Music is divine and as such, if we were to describe it with a number - because the Music is also and especially mathematics - we would use the "3". A number that easily brings us to the fifth element in the logo: the infinite. What is infinite if not a horizontal "8"? It is a horizontal "8" if not a horizontal "3" mirrored with his twin? That's what we want to leak out from the allegories of our logo: that everything, synthesized, leads to infinity of everything. We are all small numbers "3" which, reflected in the mirror, find our twin, ourselves, only useful to complement one another in such a way as to make us reach infinity. Then there is the sixth element: a crescent moon. Two sides perfectly divided, connected to Taoism on which rests the whole picture, but with a difference: the moon is down, as if the sky had taken the place of the earth and the earth the place of the sky. This is because this is our way of thinking: we start from the sky to get to touch the ground, firmly; not anchore ourselves to the ground and then reach the sky if not with the eyes. You have to dream and do it wisely and courageously. Then there is the seventh element: the North Star. As you can imagine, it is our focus, our course, our safe, steady trajectory that takes us straight to the finish line. What are we, if not sailors, travelers Existence? Everyone takes a step, each flanked on the other and vice versa. Finally, there is the eighth element: the scars at the bottom image on the left. Represent us children of Art, slaves of It and lovers of life. The pain has affected everyone and everyone will come increasingly affected by the forceful hand of Destiny. But this strengthens us and helps us up, just because it's in the infinite that we reflect ourselves and in the infinite there's immortality. This is Devanāgarī... immortality of the spirit through the death of a body. It's a little miracle. - Ego.


http://soundcloud.com/somnoroase-pasarele


Performance art

In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.



Yves Klein and Dino Buzzati engaged in the ritual transfer of immateriality, January 26, 1962
Performance art is an essentially contested concept: any single definition of it implies the recognition of rival uses. As concepts like "democracy" or "art", it implies productive disagreement with itself.[1]

The meaning of the term in the narrower sense is related to postmodernist traditions in Western culture. From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud, Dada, the Situationists, Fluxus, Installation art, and Conceptual Art, performance art tended to be defined as an antithesis to theatre, challenging orthodox artforms and cultural norms. The ideal had been an ephemeral and authentic experience for performer and audience in an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased.[2] The in this time widely discussed difference, how concepts of visual arts and concepts of performing arts are utilized, can determine the meanings of a performance art presentation (compare Performance: A Critical Introduction by Marvin Carlson, P. 103,2-105,1).

Performance art is a term usually reserved to refer to a conceptual art which conveys a content-based meaning in a more drama-related sense, rather than being simple performance for its own sake for entertainment purposes. It largely refers to a performance which is presented to an audience, but which does not seek to present a conventional theatrical play or a formal linear narrative, or which alternately does not seek to depict a set of fictitious characters in formal scripted interactions. It therefore can include action or spoken word as a communication between the artist and audience, or even ignore expectations of an audience, rather than following a script written beforehand.

Some kinds of performance art nevertheless can be close to performing arts. Such performance may utilize a script or create a fictitious dramatic setting, but still constitute performance art in that it does not seek to follow the usual dramatic norm of creating a fictitious setting with a linear script which follows conventional real-world dynamics; rather, it would intentionally seek to satirize or to transcend the usual real-world dynamics which are used in conventional theatrical plays.

Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is". As long as the performer does not become a player who repeats a role, performance art can include satirical elements (compare Blue Man Group); utilize robots and machines as performers, as in pieces of the Survival Research Laboratories; or borrow elements of any performing arts such as dance, music, and circus.

Some artists, e.g. the Viennese Actionists and neo-Dadaists, prefer to use the terms "live art", "action art", "actions", "intervention" (see art intervention) or "manoeuvre" to describe their performing activities. As genres of performance art appear body art, fluxus-performance, happening, action poetry, and intermedia.


Performance art activity is not confined to European or American art traditions; notable practitioners can be found in Asia and Latin America. Performance artists and theorists point to different traditions and histories, ranging from tribal to sporting and ritual or religious events. In an episode of In our time broadcast on Thu, 20 Oct 2005, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4, Angie Hobbs, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Warwick; Miriam Griffin, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; and John Moles, Professor of Latin, University of Newcastle discussed with Melvin Bragg the idea that Antisthenes and Diogenes in ancient Greece practiced a form of performance art and that they acquired the epithet of cynic which means "dog" due to Diogenes behaving repeatedly like a dog in his performances.

There are also accounts of Renaissance artists such as itinerant poets putting on public performances that could be said to be ancestors of performance art.[citation needed]



Conceptual work by Yves Klein at Rue Gentil-Bernard, Fontenay-aux-Roses, October 1960, photo by Harry Shunk. Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void)
Western cultural theorists often trace performance art activity back to the beginning of the 20th century, to the Russian constructivists, Futurists and Dada. Dada provided a significant progenitor with the unconventional performances of poetry, often at the Cabaret Voltaire, by the likes of Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara. Russian Futurist artists could be identified as precursors of performance, such as David Burliuk, who painted his face for his actions (1910–20) and Alexander Rodchenko and his wife Varvara Stepanova.

According to the art critic Harold Rosenberg in the 1940s and 1950s Action Painting gave artists the freedom to perform - the canvas as "an arena in which to act", thereby rendering the paintings as traces of the artist's performance in his/her studio. Abstract expressionism and Action painting preceded the Fluxus movement, Happenings and the emergence of Performance Art.

Performance art was anticipated, if not explicitly formulated, by Japan's Gutai group of the 1950s, especially in such works as Atsuko Tanaka's "Electric Dress" (1956) [1].

Yves Klein had been a precursor of performance art with the conceptual pieces of Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle (Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) 1959–62, and works like the photomontage, Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). In the late 1960s Earth artists as diverse as Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer and Carl Andre created environmental pieces that predict the performance art of the 1970s. Works of conceptual artists in the early 1980s, like Sol LeWitt, who converted mural-style drawing into an act of performance by others, were influenced by Yves Klein and the Earth artists as well.


In the 1960s a variety of new works, concepts and the increasing number of artists led to new kinds of performance art.

Prototypic for the artform later explicitly labeled "performance art", were works of artists like Yoko Ono with her Wall piece for orchestra (1962); Carolee Schneemann with pieces like Meat Joy (1964); Joseph Beuys with How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965); Yayoi Kusama, with actions such as a naked flag-burning on the Brooklyn Bridge (1968) and Allan Kaprow in his many Happenings.

Kaprow had coined the term Happening describing a new artform, at the beginning of the 1960s. A Happening allows the artist to experiment with body motion, recorded sounds, written and spoken texts, and even smells. One of Kaprow's earliest was "Happenings in the New York Scene," written in 1961 as the form was developing.[3] Notably in the Happenings of Allan Kaprow, the audience members become performers. While the audiences in Happenings had been welcomed as the performers, it is only sometimes and often unwittingly that they become an active part in a Performance. Other artists who created Happenings besides Kaprow include Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Whitman, and Wolf Vostell: Theater is in the Street (Paris in 1958).

Hermann Nitsch in 1962 presented his "Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries" (Orgien- und Mysterien Theater), a precursor to performance art, close to the performing arts.

Andy Warhol during the early 1960s beginning to create films and video, in the mid-60s sponsored the Velvet Underground and staged events and performances in New York, like the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966) that featured live Rock music, exploding lights, and film.

Indirectly influential for art-world performance, particularly in the United States, were new forms of theatre, embodied by the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Living Theatre and showcased in Off-Off Broadway theaters in SoHO and at La MaMa in New York City. The Living Theatre chiefly toured in Europe between 1963 and 1968, and in the U.S. in 1968. A work of this period, Paradise Now was notorious for its audience participation and a scene in which actors recited a list of social taboos that included nudity, while disrobing.

The work of performance artists after 1968 often showed influences of the cultural and political events of that year. Barbara T. Smith with Ritual Meal (1969) was at the forefront of the feminist body-, and performance art of the 1970s; among others including: Carolee Schneemann, and Joan Jonas. Schneemann and Jonas along with Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Vito Acconci, and Chris Burden pioneered the relationship between Body art and performance art.




Chris Burden during the performance of his 1974 piece Trans-fixed where he was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen
Artists whose work already before tended to be a performance art, as well as new artists, at the beginning of the 1970s began to present performance art in a stricter form.

New artists with radical performances were Chris Burden, with the 1971 performance piece Shoot, in which he was shot in his left arm by an assistant from a distance of about five meters, and Vito Acconci in the same year with Seedbed.

The book Expanded Cinema, by Gene Youngblood, marked a shift in the use of media by performance artists. The first book considering video art as an art form, mentions Jud Yalkut as a pioneering video artist. Since 1965 he had collaborated in dozens of intermedia performances throughout the United States, also with Nam June Paik, who beginning of the 1960s already had been a fluxus performer on the way to become a media artist. As to the art of Paik, Youngblood refers to works of Carolee Schneemann and Robert Whitman from the 1960s, which had been pioneering for performance art, becoming an independent artform at the beginning of the 1970s.[4]

The British-based pair Gilbert and George, already in 1970, had documented actions of themselves on video, and created their "living sculpture" performance, being painted in gold and singing "Underneath The Arches" for extended periods. Joan Jonas began to include video in her experimental performances in 1972.

In 1973 Laurie Anderson performed Duets on Ice, on the streets of New York City. Marina Abramović, in the performance "Rhythm 10", conceptually included the violation of her body.[5]

Since 1973 the Feminist Studio Workshop at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles had a formative impact on the wave of performances with feminist background.

Carolee Schneemann work in 1963, Eye Body, already had been a prototype of performance art. Schneemann in 1975 drew on with innovative solo performances, like Interior Scroll, showing the female body as an artistic medium.

Performance art, because of its relative transience, by the 1970s, had a fairly robust presence in the avant-garde of East Bloc countries, especially Yugoslavia and Poland.


Until the 1980s, performance art had been demystifying virtuosity. Now it began to embrace technical brilliance.[6] In reference to Presence and Resistance[7] by Philip Auslander, a performance art critic, Sally Banes writes “… by the end of the 1980s, performance art had become so widely known that it no longer needed to be defined; mass culture, especially television, had come to supply both structure and subject matter for much performance art; and several performance artists, including Laurie Anderson, Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Willem Dafoe, and Ann Magnuson, had indeed become crossover artists in mainstream entertainment.”[8]

Despite the fact that many performances are held within the circle of a small art-world group, RoseLee Goldberg notes, in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present that "performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture. Conversely, public interest in the medium, especially in the 1980s, stems from an apparent desire of that public to gain access to the art world, to be a spectator of its ritual and its distinct community, and to be surprised by the unexpected, always unorthodox presentations that the artists devise.”[9]

Among the performance art most discussed in the art-world of this decade were a performance by Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh between July 1983 and July 1984, Art/Life: One Year Performance (Rope Piece), and Karen Finlay’s I'm an Ass Man 1987.

Until the decline of the European eastern block during the late 1980s, performance art by most communist governments had actively been rejected. With the exception of Poland and Yugoslavia, performance art was more or less banned in countries where any independent public event was feared. In the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Latvia it happened in apartments, at seemingly spontaneous gatherings in artist studios, in church-controlled settings, or covered as another activity, like a photo-shooting. Isolated of the western conceptual context, in different settings it could be like a playful protest or like a bitter comment, using subversive metaphors to express dissent with the political situation.[10]

Hedwig Gorski before 1982 came up up with the term performance poetry, to distinguish her text-based vocal performances from performance art, especially the work of performance artists, such as Laurie Anderson, who worked with music at that time. Performance poets relied more on the rhetorical and philosophical expression in their poetics than performance artists, who arose from the visual art genres of painting and sculpture.


While the Soviet bloc disintegrated, formerly repressed activities of performance artists like György Galántai in Hungary, or the Collective Action Group in Russia, became better known. Young artists from all over the former Eastern bloc, including Russia, turned to performance. Performance art at about the same time appeared in Cuba, the Caribbean and China. Chinese performance artists like Zhang Huan had been performing underground since the late 1980s. Beginning of the 1990s chinese performance art already was acclaimed in the international artscene.[11]

"In these contexts performance art became a critical new voice with a social force similar to that found in Western Europe, the United States and South America in the 1960s and early 1970s. It should be emphasized that the eruption of performance art in the 1990s in Eastern Europe, China, South Africa, Cuba, and elsewhere should never be considered either secondary to or imitative of the West."[12]

In the western world in the 1990s, even sophisticated performance art became part of the cultural mainstream: performance art as a complete artform gained admittance into art museums and became a museal topic.[13]


In the second half of the decade, computer-aided forms of performance art began to take place.[14]

From March 14 to May 31, 2010, the Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective and performance recreation of Marina Abramović's work, the biggest exhibition of performance art in MoMA's history.[15] During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed "The Artist is Present," a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum's atrium, while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.[16] A support group for the "sitters," "Sitting with Marina," was established on Facebook.[17] The performance attracted celebrities such as Björk and James Franco and received coverage on the internet including an essay by NYC-author Tao Lin.[18]


Warren Meyers is co director of Audiofreaks and has been involved in the global dance/pop music scene for over 10 Years now and has had stacks of chart success, both as a producer, writer and even as an artist in his 
    own right.
    
    Warren is a multi talented & highly recognised singer, songwriter and†producer with a very in depth understanding of how a top production company needs to operate in order to achieve major success. Warrens main function is as a self titled 'Creative Trouble Shooter' and in that role Warren helps to structure final Radio edits so that they fit into National radio Daytime playlists, Record vocals to a very high standard as both a vocal coach and vocal producer/engineer, advise our other teams on missing ingredients and suggest alternatives, engineer final tracks, co-ordinate PA mixes for various artists and suggest the best way to perform on stage and at gigs. 
    
    Warren went to school at St Maryís in Oxted, Surrey, where like both his elder brothers, he was voted into the School Captain position by his fellow students. Warren has always had natural leadership qualities and a warm personality and big heart which means he gets on amazingly with everyone.
    
    As a producer, warren teams up with his bother 'Matt Meyers' to work under many various production guises to include Benson 'n' Hedges (Cayenne/Virgin), Eternal Soul (Slip n Slide), Club 4 Life (fierce Angels/AATW), 45 FLAT (Data), The Audiofreaks (Audiofreaks) & alongside Kelly Mueller, one of the hottest production teams in the world of dance/pop music, Soulshaker (Gusto/AATW/Universal). Between these aforementioned production names Warren has enjoyed over†ten No1 dance chart hits and around thirty top 40 dance chart entries. Warren has also done stacks of remixes under these various names and in the last few months alone has remixed Mary J Blige, Chaka Khan, Lindsay Lohan, Judge Jules, Ultra Nate, Martha Wash & Ce Ce Peniston.
    
    As a songwriter, Warren (J.D.ROX) has written for some of the biggest pop acts around†and currently has currently got tracks pending release on Data, Fierce Angels, Positva, New State, Cayenne, AATW, Univeral, Kickin and countless other labels. Warren has just had National success with his co-write on the Therese 'Feelin Me' track which was just out on Positiva and is still the most played video on The Box and MTV Dance.
    
    As a perfomer, Warren has toured all over the World and performed tracks at many of the Worlds leading club nights including Ministry Of Sound and various top nights throughout Ibiza and Aiya Napa. Warren has also toured on the prestigious Smash Hits tour performing alongside acts like Atomic Kitten, Liberty X, Phixx and Blue etc. Warren has also just been signed to Data/Ministry Of Sound under his new guise 'J.D.ROX' as a featured artist on the forthcoming smash ëHardroxí.
    
    Warren also presents a Weekly show on Ministry Of Sound radio called The Audiofreaks Sessions with his brother Matt. Warren is lucky enough to be friends with lots of the biggest names in the world of dance music and so far has called upon guys like David Morales, Victor Simonelli, Benni Benessi, Deepgroove, Soulseekerz, Timo Garcia, The Sharp Boys and Michael Gray to do guest mixes for them on their Ministry radio show.
    
    Warren Meyers has had a lifelong appreciation of music. Warren†grew up surrounded by some of the Worlds most talented musicians and producers due to the fact that his father 'Dave Meyers' was a big songwriter during the 60s and 70s, writing lots of hits, and he was also a music business entrepreneur who actually discovered the legendary 'Billy Ocean' (who actually used to babysit for Warren & his brothers when they were children). 
    
    Warren's family also own the World Famous recording studio complex at London Bridge UK, known as The Vineyard and formerly known as The legendary 'Hit Factory' through Stock, Aitken & Watermans success.
    Music has always been in Warren's blood and from Day one it has been his path & sole purpose in life.

Audley Helen is following