Diva Ex Machina:

An Introduction to the Re-Inventing the Diva Festival at the Western Front by Lori Weidenhammer

Many performance artists challenge themselves and their audiences by questioning the conventions of performance such as character, location, lighting, stage presence, seating, and audience expectations. In short, performance artists redefine what it means to perform. Taking the position of the Anti-Diva, Haley Newman conducts her performance in the dark. She creates seductive sounds through a series of actions which are sporardically illuminated by a lighting device directly controlled by her, giving the audience brief glimpses of how she creates the sounds.

Over the course of this century the tools of the diva trade have changed, and so has the technological framework that produces new divas. A nostalgic cult surrounds the divas of the silver screen who have remained larger-than-life even after death: Garbo, Dietrich, Betty Davis, and Joan Crawford. Marlene Madison Plimley mines the gutsy female characters in Film Noir to create fictional cinematic divas. Now photography, stage and studio lighting, curlers, makeup, are giving way to video projectors, and computer applications such as After Effects, and Photoshop. Performance artists know how to create illusions using both the new and the old technologies. Some, like Mathew Barney, Marlene Madison Plimley and Tagny Duff use prosthetic makeup to create mythical characters that star in their own narratives. Others use software to create avatars that are the divas of their own cyber-spectacles.

A diva is often referred to as someone who gives the definitive performance, whereas a performance artist works to re-define performance. The artists in the Re-Inventing the Diva Festival will use conventional and unconventional tools to bring the concept of the diva up to date and also celebrate the nostalgia that surrounds the divas that came before us. Come and join us!

Manifesto of the Do-It-Yourself Diva: We are the Photoshop generation of performance artists. We can fake endurance performances in Adobe After-Effects. We can make myths in Photoshop. At the end of the century we all are laying claim to our fifteen minutes of fame. We can buy a Dolly Parton wig, or buy Mac makeup to make us look like Ru Paul. We can buy the book Making Faces by makeup artist for the stars, Kevin Aucoin, and learn how to change our faces to look like a diva, even of the opposite sex. As various computer programs and information technology become more accessible to the average person, we can broadcast our finest moments to anyone who will catch our rising or falling star in cyberspace. This is the era of the post-human diva, a construct that is grotesque and divine, a monster with magical powers...