In 1982, I witnessed this process very dramatically when Lacy and I briefly shared the same space (my home in Southern California) in order to write about our respective reactions to Freeze Frame, a collaboration between Lacy and Julia London. On August 13, 1982, this performance brought together seventeen very different groups of womenamong them prostitutes, nuns, bridge players, Filipinas, artists from San Francisco’s Mission District, women with disabilities, corporate women, and elderly Jewish womenwho met in an elegant furniture showroom in San Francisco to discuss their lives and the topic of survival. I responded quickly with „A Family of Women?“a wildly enthusiastic and somewhat poetic account of the evolution of this extraordinary piece.Lacy, on the other hand, wrote „Beneath the Seams,“ a sober, self-examining text (chapter 15). In it, she placed Freeze Frame in the context of her other recent large-scale public events in which diverse women were brought togethermost notably, River Meetings, Lives of Women in the Delta, a 1980 performance-action in New Orleans created by Lacy, Jeanne Nathan, and Laverne Dunn, along with many other women, which referred to Louisiana’s failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. [II] River Meetings had evolved out of a lengthy community-building process, so characteristic of Lacy’s work (in this case a chain of private dinners in homes), and ended with a magnificent potluck performance event for five hundred women in the historic Old Mint Building in the French Quarter. As Lacy described it at the time: „We had young and old, rich and poor, black and white, all sitting together and feeling enormous pride and joy in their collective history and current achievements.“ (…)

[I] Lacy, interview by Moira Roth, „Visions and Revisions,“ Artforum 19, no. 3 (November 1980): 45.

Lacy first published the text in the „Speak Easy“ guest commentary column of New Art Examiner, October 1982; it is reprinted in this volume (chapter 15) under its original title, „Beneath the Seams.“

[II] Lacy’s description of the „Battle of New Orleans,“ first published in High Performance 3, no. 2 (Summer 1980) and reprinted in this volume (chapter 14), contains intriguing questions: „When feminist artists plan a political conference with a performance theme, where does the art making end and the life making begin? Can a conference be a performance?“ The Women’s Caucus for Art invited her, in 1979, to design a performance for their annual conference, scheduled the following year for New Orleans, a city in a state that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

In 1982, I witnessed this process very dramatically when Lacy and I briefly shared the same space (my home in Southern California) in order to write about our respective reactions to Freeze Frame, a collaboration between Lacy and Julia London. On August 13, 1982, this performance brought together seventeen very different groups of womenamong them prostitutes, nuns, bridge players, Filipinas, artists from San Francisco’s Mission District, women with disabilities, corporate women, and elderly Jewish women who met in an elegant furniture showroom in San Francisco to discuss their lives and the topic of survival. I responded quickly with „A Family of Women?“ a wildly enthusiastic and somewhat poetic account of the evolution of this extraordinary piece.Lacy, on the other hand, wrote „Beneath the Seams,“ a sober, self-examining text (chapter 15).[I] In it, she placed Freeze Frame in the context of her other recent large-scale public events in which diverse women were brought togethermost notably, River Meetings, Lives of Women in the Delta, a 1980 performance-action in New Orleans created by Lacy, Jeanne Nathan, and Laverne Dunn, along with many other women, which referred to Louisiana’s failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.[II] River Meetings had evolved out of a lengthy community-building process, so characteristic of Lacy’s work (in this case a chain of private dinners in homes), and ended with a magnificent potluck performance event for five hundred women in the historic Old Mint Building in the French Quarter. As Lacy described it at the time: „We had young and old, rich and poor, black and white, all sitting together and feeling enormous pride and joy in their collective history and current achievements.“ (…)

[I] Lacy, interview by Moira Roth, „Visions and Revisions,“ Artforum 19, no. 3 (November 1980): 45.

Lacy first published the text in the „Speak Easy“ guest commentary column of New Art Examiner, October 1982; it is reprinted in this volume (chapter 15) under its original title, „Beneath the Seams.“

[II] Lacy’s description of the „Battle of New Orleans,“ first published in High Performance 3, no. 2 (Summer 1980) and reprinted in this volume (chapter 14), contains intriguing questions: „When feminist artists plan a political conference with a performance theme, where does the art making end and the life making begin? Can a conference be a performance?“ The Women’s Caucus for Art invited her, in 1979, to design a performance for their annual conference, scheduled the following year for New Orleans, a city in a state that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.