The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

[Franklin Furnace]

The Flue Volume 1, Number 5

New York City, USA: Franklin Furnace, 1981

8 pp., 43 x 29 cm., newspaper

Edition size unknown

Martha Wilson founded Franklin Furnace in 1976, to serve artists working in marginalized media such as publishing and performance, which could be vulnerable to "institutional neglect, cultural bias, their ephemeral nature, or politically unpopular content."

Four years in, the Artist Run Centre began publishing a periodical called The Flue. Conceived by artist and printer Conrad Gleber, The Flue published sixteen issues between 1980 and 1989, which varied in format, including tabloids, posters, and newsletters. 

The publication served as a vehicle for promotion, political advocacy1, and helping to fulfill the mandate  of the organization, with articles on Artists’ Books, Performance Art, and Video works. It featured contributions by Jon Hendricks, Barbara Moore, Clive Philpot, Louise Lawler, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. 

A variety of artists were invited to serve as editors and designers, including Barbara Kruger, Linda Montano, Sherrie Levine, Carla Liss, and Buzz Spector. Richard McGuire served as both for this fifth issue2, which featured Laurie Anderson on the cover, promoting a concert she gave in celebration of Franklin Furnace’s fifth anniversary. 

The issue also features Diana Augaitis’ “Eastern European Bookworks,” "Sound Works 2" by Peter Frank (see last week's post, here) and descriptions of installations and performances by Al Aguilar, Sydney Blum & Janet Henry, Ronny H. Cohen, James Coleman, Toby MacLennan, Sandra McKee, Carol Meine, and Sandy Moore.

Copies of the periodical are now extremely rare. This issue can be bought for $175 US, here, or downloaded as a free PDF from Primary Information, here. As part of their ongoing efforts to make rare, archival material available, the publisher has collaborated with Franklin Furnace to digitize and disturb all sixteen issues. 

1. In her editorial, Martha Wilson notes "As I am writing this, President Reagan is dealing a heavy blow to arts funding for organizations which present avant-garde art. Below you will see my letter to the New York Times and a reply from a citizen who doesn’t realize that less than a dollar a year of tax payer’s money is devoted to the arts in America." 

2. Wilson remained as Editor-in-Chief and McGuire shared editorial duties with Lucy Evanicki. 

Linda Montano | Linda As Lenny

Linda Montano

Linda As Lenny

La Jolla, USA: Laurence McGilvery, 2015

30.3 x 45.6 cm.

Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies [+14 AP]

A digital poster on stiff Hahnemühle photo rag paper of an image taken in the late eighties in Manhattan's East Thirties, from a series of photographs by Annie Sprinkle that depict Montano in various guises. 

I'll admit I mistook the title as Linda as Lemmy, from the metal band Motorhead, whose handlebar moustache and denim outfits felt more iconic a look than Lenny Bruce. But as I look closer I see that there the moustache is not handlebar, just in the shadows. The publisher notes that he thinks that Montano looks like a young Bob Dylan. Either way, it reminds me of Douglas Gordon's self-portrait as Andy Warhol, as Kurt Cobain, as Marilyn Monroe, as killer Myra Hindley. 

The work is available for $75 here. 

This Week on Tumblr: Posters

Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh | Art/Life One Year Performance Poster

Tehching Hsieh/Linda Montano
Art/Life One Year Performance Poster
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1983
43 x 28 cm.
Edition size unknown

A poster announcing a year long performance during which the two artists would be tied together with a rope. Available from Printed Matter for only $25.00 US, here.

Yesterday it was announced that Tehching Hsieh will represent Taiwan at the 2017 Venice Biennale:

“This exhibition is a rare opportunity to show previously unseen early works that I made in Taiwan, and to develop new understandings of my One Year Performances in New York,” Hsieh said. “I am grateful for the support of the nominating committee, the director of TFAM Ping Lin, chief curator Chaoying Wu, and for the opportunity to collaborate with curator Adrian Heathfield.”

Linda Montano & Tehching Hsieh | Rope

Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh
Art/Life One Year Performance Poster [Rope]
New York City, USA: Self-published, 1983
43 x 28 cm.
folded poster
Edition size unknown

From the 4th of July, 1983 until the 3rd of July, 1984, performance artists Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh were tied together by an 8 foot rope. They were never to be apart for the full year,  but also not allowed to touch one another.

The work is a conflation of a Montano solo piece from ten years prior called Handcuff, in which she cuffed herself to the artist Tom Marioni for three day intervals (the work was presented as a series of thirty minute videos) and the One Year Performances of Hsieh. These included Cage Piece, in which the artist lived for 365 days in a small jail cell, Time Clock Piece in which he punched a clock every hour of the day, on the hour, for a full year and Outdoor Piece, in which he did not enter a building or shelter of any kind for the entire year. Following Rope Piece Hsieh completed two more epic durational works: No Art Piece, in which he did not engage with art for a full year and Thirteen Year Plan, in which he neither produced nor exhibited work for the remainder of the millennium.

The contract for Rope, dated July 4th, 1983, and signed by the two artists, stated the following:

STATEMENT

We, Linda Montano and Teheching Hsieh, plan to do a one year performance.
We will stay together for one year and never be alone.
We will be in the same room at the same time, when we are inside.
We will be tied together at waist with an 8 ft rope.
We will never touch each other during the year.

The performance will begin on July 4, 1983 at 6 P.M. and continue until July 4, 1984 at 6 P.M.


Hsieh describes the work as a relational piece:  "We were tied by a rope and stayed in the same room without touching for a year. There were always other people in my first three One Year Performances, but they were behind the scene; in this piece the Other became visible".

Montano described the process to Susan Silas:

"Before I met him, I was living in a Zen monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York and it was difficult to come out of hiding, out of the monastery, to adopt art again and say my practice is not just meditation, it’s not just the monastery. But the allure to work with him was strong. Martha Wilson introduced us and he was looking for someone to work with, to be tied with. The backstory is that the intensity of being with him, of being conscripted—I’m thinking military—because it was such a disciplined and militaristic piece—the intensity of being tied 24/7— in the bathroom at the same time, in the same room at the same time and yet the beauty of working with such a master—I really consider him a master, was worth the drama and interior struggle. And it helped me to think about time in a different way because I had done the handcuffed piece and blindfolded pieces but they were different time frames. When I left him I came back upstate still very attached to the form, to the discipline, to the message and the job. I wanted more, so I gave myself another seven years of endurance calling it 7 Years of Living Art and the piece eventually evolved and became 14 Years of Living Art, 1984-1998.
....

We went into Zen mode. In the beginning we talked and then we became animals and pulled, come over here, grunted—we became Siamese twins and by the end it was all smell. Not really, but I am using the word as a metaphor. We smelled each other is how I remember it, and there was a lot of moaning and groaning and pulling and tugging and gesticulating."

A copy of the poster announcing the project is available at Printed Matter, here, for $25.00 US.

Linda Montano | The wisdom of Mataji & Bapuji

Linda M. Montano
The Wisdom of Mataji & Bapuji
Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 2000
1 pp., 21 x 13 cm. (folded) 41 x 51 cm (unfolded), paper
Edition of 1000, 25 signed by the artist


The only issue of the Little Cockroach Press series to deviate from the 16 page format, this folded poster contains Montano’s biographical account of her spiritual mentors and friends Dr. Aruna Mehta (Mataji) and Dr. A.L. Mehta (Bapuji). It includes 51 sayings by Mataji and a meditation on Christmas by Bapuji.