The Protesting Body: Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus, and Sharon Hayes

Abstract

Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz-Starus and Sharon Hayes have created public performances that respond to the socio-political conditions of their time and place, and extend the boundaries of the traditional public sphere to include feminist concerns. In their collaborative performance In Mourning and In Rage (1977), Lacy and Labowitz-Starus utilized the private, feminist practice of consciousness-raising to bring widespread visibility to the politics of the female body. Hayes' works In the Near Future (2007-09) and Everything Else Has Failed! Don't You Think It's Time for Love? (2007), draw attention to issues concerning counterpublics through obliquely referential personal and political narratives. These works all mobilize a performing, protesting body whose corporeality mediates the audience's political realizations, past memories and current subjecthood.