'Bad Reputation: Performances, Essays, Interviews' review
Issue #41
By Penny Arcade
By Venuszine Administrator
Published: September 1st, 2009 | 3:18pm
In the post-Talking Heads era, a new generation of artists upended working-class radicals like Jack Smith and John Vaccaro with art-school degrees and cultivated manners. Subtle as it may seem, the divide is integral to the work of downtown perennial Penny Arcade. In the late sixties, Arcade (born Susana Carmen Ventura to Italian immigrants) crafted a Warhol-star persona from class strife and feminist politics.
Bad Reputation collects her performance pieces La Miseria and Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! with photography and essays about the artist. In La Miseria, Arcade exposes “Maria,” representing her mother, to the audience and coloring the elder several shades embarrassed. Today, divisions in age and class are harder to define, yet Penny is still a force. “Everything I’ve done is ageless,” she tells filmmaker Chris Kraus in an interview, adding that issues of gender-bias and gentrification still hit home. — Kate Silver
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