Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
her filmic work Remote... Remote (1973), which shows her
treating her cuticles with a Stanley knife in an increasingly
brutal and bloody fashion, cutting deeper and deeper into the
flesh.
33 One of the comparatively rare - and surprisingly early
- examples of gender concern by a male performer is Vito
Acconci's Conversion (1970). Acconci actively contested his
masculinity and tried to create a more feminine bodily
appearance by burning his body hair, pulling at each breast
"in a futile attempt to produce female breasts" (Acconci cited
in Goldberg 156) and hiding his penis between his legs.
Another, albeit highly controversial, instance of a male
critical engagement with gender relations informs John
Duncan's performance Blind Date (1980). Duncan bought a female
corpse for sexual purposes and filmed his sexual intercourse
with it. After this experience, which he himself described as
an extreme form of self-deprecation, he underwent a vasectomy
to make sure that each and every fertile sperm he possessed
was buried in the corpse (Stiles 241). This operation,
anticipating Orlan's later surgical performances, was followed
by a public showing of Blind Date and Duncan's explanation
that he wanted to demonstrate what could happen to men who had
been taught to ignore their feelings (243).
34 Other artists intend their performances to be more
general political statements. Thus Lorena Wolffer voiced a
combined criticism of practices of torture and of the abuse of
women in her performance Mexican Territory (1995). She
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