Culture Wars Cabaret

Patrick’s Cabaret presents… THE CULTURE WARS CABARET part of The Culture Wars: Then & Now a partnership between Patrick’s Cabaret, the Walker Art Center, and the University of Minnesota Friday, March 27th & Saturday March 28th, 2015 at 8:00 PM $15 advanced online sales only, rush line available for at-door tickets Tickets: culturewarscabaret.brownpapertickets.com FEATURING: Jaime Carrera Venus DeMars Sweet LilyBee Junauda Petrus Lazer Danger Elliot Reed (Corporate Headquarters) Interactive installation by Emmett Ramstad Co-curated and hosted by Eleanor Savage and Scott Artley ABOUT THE CULTURE WARS CABARET In 1994, queer performance artist Ron Athey performed "Four Scenes in a Harsh Life," under the aegis of the Walker Art Center, at the then-underground performance venue Patrick's Cabaret. Athey's infamous performance, which involved ritual incision, sparked a national debate around art and censorship, ultimately leading to the slashing of the National Endowment for the Arts budget, the near-complete elimination of grants to individual artists, and a powerful chilling effect on controversial artwork. Twenty-one years later, almost to the day, how does this controversy reverberate in our local and national cultural landscape? In the culminating activity of a weekend-long series of events, the Culture Wars Cabaret brings together eight artists representing a snapshot of some of the most interesting queer performance art in the Twin Cities to reflect on the themes of censorship, contemporary queer aesthetics, and radical embodied performance. As an intergenerational team, Eleanor Savage and Scott Artley co-curate the Culture Wars Cabaret by pairing established LGBTQ performers (punk-rock pioneer Venus DeMars, performative provocateur Jaime Carrera, and the fiery burlesque of Sweet LillyBee) alongside emerging multidisciplinary queer artists who stretch new boundaries for embodied performance (Junauda Petrus, Elliot Reed, and the duo Lazer Danger). Emmett Ramstad premieres a new interactive installation called "Trimming Station," a pubic hair trimming and collection station. Tickets are available for $15 by online advanced sales only through Brown Paper Tickets. A no-guarantee rush line will be available for any remaining seats at 7:45 PM. Ticket-holders need to arrive by 7:45 PM to ensure their seats are held. ABOUT THE CULTURE WARS: THEN & NOW PROJECT Over the past year, a partnership formed between Patrick’s Cabaret, the Walker Art Center, and an ad hoc team at the University of Minnesota to present a weekend of events exploring the history of the Culture Wars in multifaceted ways. The combination of high-profile artist talk, paper presentations, and multidisciplinary performances represents a unique opportunity to revisit this important moment in local art history, consider the current reality of funding for the arts, and showcase the state of radical queer performance art in the Midwest. THE CULTURE WARS: THEN & NOW - FULL WEEKEND OF ACTIVITIES MARCH 26-28 Ron Athey in Conversation with Jennifer Doyle Thursday 3/26 at 7:00 PM - FREE Walker Cinema Conversation between performance artist Ron Athey & writer Jennifer Doyle at the Walker Art Center. FREE with tickets available starting at 6:00 PM at the lobby desk. Culture Wars: Then & Now Sympoisum Friday 3/27 at 1:00 PM to 5:30 PM - FREE Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota Featuring paper presentations by graduate students and a keynote lecture with performance studies scholar Amelia Jones. Culture Wars Cabaret Friday 3/27 and Saturday 3/28 at 8:00 PM - Tickets $15 Patrick’s Cabaret Performances by local artists exploring themes of censorship, queer expression, and radical embodied performance at Patrick's Cabaret. SPONSORS The Culture Wars: Then and Now is sponsored by the University of Minnesota, Patrick’s Cabaret, and the Walker Art Center. The graduate symposium is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Art History; Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; English; Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies; History; Political Science; and Theatre Arts and Dance; as well as the Schochet Endowment for GLBT Studies.