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I.C. Notebooks 1
1971-02-06 ""Center for New Performing Arts Workshop""
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Center for New Performing Arts Workshop, February 6,1971, Macbride Auditorium "The Cow, an Engine of Despair,. in Six Tableaux" was a performance piece response to the museum of natural history (stuffed animals, some in panorama) on the third floor of Macbride Hall as well as to the studios for the museum's taxidermy school and staff in the basement. Drawing and printmaking students often sketched in the museum, and I also took my Multimedia I classes there on occasion. I had contacted the museum faculty about casts of animals,. the only parts of animals ever cast were the "soft" parts, noses, mouths. The faculty allowed me to borrow these and thus began the "cow" sculpture, of a red (bloodied) nose in a funereal black velvet tasseled bag. The art object contrasts the careful "trickery" of the museum to the symbolic presentation of the beef cow, created for the vast slaughterhouse that is the state of Iowa. Some poems (included) by Lorca and the darkly amusing page from "The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Jim, and Ron" were part of my reading at that time, and worked perfectly with the presentation of this sculpture and related objects. DENNIS SWANSON
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Center for New Performing Arts Workshop, February 6,1971, Macbride Auditorium "The Cow, an Engine of Despair,. in Six Tableaux" was a performance piece response to the museum of natural history (stuffed animals, some in panorama) on the third floor of Macbride Hall as well as to the studios for the museum's taxidermy school and staff in the basement. Drawing and printmaking students often sketched in the museum, and I also took my Multimedia I classes there on occasion. I had contacted the museum faculty about casts of animals,. the only parts of animals ever cast were the "soft" parts, noses, mouths. The faculty allowed me to borrow these and thus began the "cow" sculpture, of a red (bloodied) nose in a funereal black velvet tasseled bag. The art object contrasts the careful "trickery" of the museum to the symbolic presentation of the beef cow, created for the vast slaughterhouse that is the state of Iowa. Some poems (included) by Lorca and the darkly amusing page from "The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Jim, and Ron" were part of my reading at that time, and worked perfectly with the presentation of this sculpture and related objects. DENNIS SWANSON
Campus Culture
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