Recreating Ritual: Memento Mori and A Certain Level of Denial

Sometimes I pretend to talk to my dead friends on the phone—as if the phone were ringing in heaven.

Sometimes I leave the Rolodex open at your phone number, because
for a moment I forget—

There is no ritual that makes me feel any better.
Praying just doesn't do it.
Praying just doesn't work for me.
Working just doesn't make me forget
The Higher Power never shows up.
Letting go doesn't work, because I ain't got nothing to hold on to.
Crying helps.
Crying helps. . . .
I'll light you a candle.
I'll say you a prayer.
Baby we're past hope
past hope . . .(25)

Finley often refers directly to the many deaths that have surrounded her. Her father committed suicide in 1978, when she was twenty-one, and she has since lost many friends and [page 203] fellow artists to AIDS. A Certain Level of Denial was created in 1992 as part of Finley's focus on gay rights and gay issues, and as a mourning ritual for the arts community hard-hit by HIV. Four years before, in 1988, Finley had created A Suggestion of Madness, a piece commemorating the tenth anniversary of her father's suicide. Juxtaposing sections of these two pieces demonstrates their recurring imagery. Compare the earlier passage from "In Memory Of" with this section of her father's suicide note, which she read to close A Suggestion of Madness: "To know I have hurt you is to know that I would gladly bear your pain. To know that you have ever been afraid of me is my darkness of night. No sure ever. No infinity."(26)

Both passages point to the absence of God—"No Higher Power," "No infinity"—but their presence in Finley's performances also involves the creation of rituals for mourning, and the search for hope in the face of tragedy. Finley describes her purpose in using her father's note when creating A Suggestion of Madness: "by reading this incredibly private document, I was trying to represent the absurdity of the idea that the theater can truly represent emotional pain, that it can cause the audience to experience emotions that are 'real.'"(27) Finley's work often underscores the difficulty of describing human pain, both physical and emotional.

Elaine Scarry's work The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, also attempts to explain this difficulty. In the first half of her book, "The Un-Making of the World," Scarry makes a case for her hypothesis that the more severe human pain becomes, the less able humans are to express their pain using language. She uses torture and war as models for understanding how and why human pain is inflicted, and carefully details the loss of language that the victims undergo. In the second half of her book, "The Making of the World," Scarry examines the imagination, which enables humans to generate descriptive and communicative language. Her theory is that the imagination generates images/thoughts in much the same way that pain destroys them. One of her categories of supplementary examples in Part II involves the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the relationship they show between the body, Christ, and [page 204] death. She looks at the language used, but more explicitly, at the central symbol of Christianity, the cross:

An act of representation is an act of embodiment. Christ is himself embodied in the scriptures, long before any visual depictions of him. But it is also interesting that centuries of visual representations have made Christ's embodiment more prominent, have made it their central content.

In Western art and culture, by far the two mostly endlessly visualized moments in Christ's life are his infancy and his hour of dying . . . the depicted hours on the cross make visible the inside of the body, the body in its nearly unchallengable demonstration of its final requirement.(28)

Scarry's ideas concerning the language of pain and Christian depictions of the crucifixion are linked with Finley's purpose in creating mourning rituals and then representing herself as, and enabling others to become, an intimate part of them. Finley tries to embody the language we lack for the pain of losing a loved one through death. Since traditional Catholic practices are not enough to bring Finley solace—"Praying just doesn't work for me"—she imagines new ways and createsnew rituals to provide herself and others with the emotional release that traditional Catholic belief structures and ritual practices used to provide. Critic Edward Scheer describes her work:

Finley's work also exhibits emotion not simply as a personal catharsis but as site of transduction, developing an energy in one symbolic system for use in another, from body to language, from artistic corpus to social body, to generate a shift in potential and a symbolic transformation. Put simply, Finley's work is intended to allow more freedom for the body, however it is conceived.(29)

[page 205] As evidence of this search for bodily freedom and emotional release, consider an installation piece Finley created in England in 1991, parts of which later became integrated into A Certain Level Of Denial (1992). The installation, titled Momento Mori, consisted of several mourning rituals in which the public was invited to participate. These included the "Ribbon Gate," where each visitor could take a ribbon and tie it to the gate in memory of someone they loved who had died of AIDS; the "Carnation Wall," where visitors could take carnations dipped in red paint and place them in the holes of a wall covered with white lace, also to mark the passing of someone who had died of AIDS; and a row of empty beds, each with an empty nightstand and chair, meant to represent the shared ritual of the bedside vigil spent beside a loved one who is dying. A fourth ritual, added when the installation moved to Los Angeles, consisted of a room filled with sand and lit candles; visitors could "enter the room and write the names of those they had lost to AIDS"(30) in the sand.

These four rituals, each a method of memorializing the dead through visual, temporal, sensual experience, reveal another layer of symbolic meaning when compared with traditions surrounding Catholic burial rites. The flowers traditionally sent by friends and family members to the funeral home and/or the service, often in wreaths tied with ribbons, are echoed in the first two rituals, the "Ribbon Gate" and the "Carnation Wall." The bedside vigil resembles the Catholic wake, the "sitting with the dead" that occurs in the hours between death and the funeral and burial. Sand is often referred to in the Christian scriptures as a symbol of impermanence and the transience of human life and effort, as in the parable about the man who built his house on a foundation of sand. Candles have many layers of symbolic meaning to Catholics; their light may represent an individual human soul, signify hope in the midst of darkness, and represent the Holy Spirit's presence in the sacrament of Baptism.

Theologian Eugene Kennedy contends that:

Religion as an environment is Proustian in its evocative power, incarnating itself in dramatic events, such as a person's first confession [. . .] or the whisper of [page 206] devotional candles extinguishing themselves in their own melting. They are skin, shell, and silver bowl holding the mystery of a faith powerful enough to infiltrate every crack and fissure of our human experience.(31)

In Memento Mori, Finley seeks to tap into this "evocative power" by utilizing the symbolic and ritual language of Catholicism to create a space apart from the outer world for her audiences to contemplate and mourn. Although Finley does not seek a Catholic audience for her works, she is deeply concerned with the spectator's relation to her work. Momento Mori, as described above, only succeeds in becoming art through interactivity, through audience participation in the rituals she creates. In selecting certain symbols over others—ribbons, candles, sand—Finley is tapping into the cultural heritage of Roman Catholicism, even as she seeks to provide solace for an audience composed of people traditionally excluded from Roman Catholic rituals, in this instance homosexuals and those who had lost loved ones to AIDS. (In 1987, Pope John Paul II preached tolerance toward all people with HIV, but Church teaching remains unchanged in regard to the immorality of homosexual acts. Fifteen years later, there is still no official Church position on priests with AIDS, who comprise a significant population.(32)) Two goals of Finley's work are to reveal the political power wielded by those defining what is sacred, and to encourage her audiences to become active in creating their own definitions.

The Virgin Mary is Pro-Choice

One of Finley's most controversial installations, "The Virgin Mary is Pro-Choice," exemplifies her work in demonstrating the political power owned by those who define sacred ideology. In claiming a traditional Catholic figurehead as a supporter of a controversial feminist issue, Finley directly linked humanity, art, and the sacred in ways that made conservatives very, very nervous. This idea first appeared as a two-story wall mural at the [page 207] Franklin Furnace, in May 1990, as part of an exhibition entitled "A Woman's Life Isn't Worth Much." Finley painted related murals on the themes of women's rights and abortion rights on surrounding walls. The feature piece was a two-story image of the Virgin with the caption, "The Virgin Mary is pro-choice."

Relatively few people had the chance to see this exhibition—the Furnace's performance space was closed in mid-May "in violation of fire laws," after the NY Fire Department received a call claiming that the Furnace was an "illegal social club."(33) When the Furnace insisted on keeping the art gallery open, the non-profit was audited by the IRS and investigated by the General Accounting Office at the request of Jesse Helms. The Furnace's board decided to stage a public rebellion against such heavy-handed government intervention, hosting a performance gala at the Public Theatre in July 1990 which featured controversial artists including Finley, Jessica Hagedorn, Eric Bogosian, and the Guerilla Girls. In the end, the Furnace had to move across town to another space in May 1992, where artists utilized sections of its new space for installations and performance events until 1996.

Finley eventually incorporated her idea of coupling the Virgin Mary with pro-choice politics into her performance piece "It's My Body," from A Certain Level of Denial. This time, she included the Virgin among other historical female icons:

I saw the Virgin Mary and she carried a sign that read "PRO-CHOICE." I saw Cleopatra and she wore a T-shirt that read, "VAGINAL PRIDE." I saw Joan of Arc and she wore a button that read, "THE POPE IS SATAN." I saw Josephine Baker and she held a sign that read, "U.S. OUT OF MY UTERUS."(34)

By reclaiming such famous women and incorporating them into her cause, Finley inspired outrage in audiences who had never before considered that such notable historical women might have held controversial opinions on issues concerning women's reproductive [page 208] rights. While Finley certainly did not claim to know the Virgin Mary's political stance, she jumped at the opportunity to challenge popular understandings of the Virgin, and to demystify the Virgin's allure. As she described it:

"The Virgin Mary is Pro-Choice" might come out of anger or spite or humor, but I'm not putting others in their place; it's my work as an artist. I just look at it as material, the same way I look at the Bush administration. [. . .] I don't really put it like it's that much more special.(35)

Finley's controversial choices of material often spring from her wish to challenge her audience's preconceptions. Her choice of the Virgin Mary, a Catholic cultural icon with multiple layers of meaning, was meant to foreground the idea of being pro-choice in an unforgettable way. Virtues traditionally associated with the Virgin include meekness, humility, and unconditional love, especially of children. None of these virtues is commonly associated with pro-choice women, who are often villified as "baby-killers" or worse. Finley chose the most virtuous of Catholic women, and associated her with a political stance considered sinful by a certain Catholic subgroup. Thus, she succeeded in connecting the sacred with the political by asking those believers to examine the connections between women's holiness and their powerlessness, between the sanctity of life and the ability to exercise free will.

A Parodic Look at Ritual: Living It Up

Not all of Finley's works surrounding the theme of death are meant to be serious. In her book Living It Up (1996), a parody of the Martha-Stewart inspired home crafts movement, she includes a piece entitled "Do Your Own Casket." The following passage is a sample of the wry humor she uses to deflect our fear of death and illusions of control:

[page 209] I have come to realize that I just can't trust anyone to correctly organize my funeral after I'm gone. Many people fear death, but my biggest fear is that my last appearnce [sic] will be lying in an ordinary, nondescript, unmemorable casket.[. . .] The only way to ensure a funeral to my liking is to plan and rehearse my own funeral. People rehearse for weddings, for birthing classes, where they practice breathing, practice baking a cake till they get it just right. So every year I rehearse my funeral with me center stage. I send out invitations, and it has become an annual event with guests even sending funeral wreaths and flowers. I always update the ceremony to keep up with the latest funeral trends. [. . .] I also cook all the food and decide on the music—I want everything to be just right! And right means my way.(36) (Finley's emphasis)

Symbolically, we see the trappings of a formal religious funeral—wreaths, flowers, the casket, the food for the funeral dinner, the sacramental music—this time through the eyes of a woman obsessed with making every detail creative, unique, individualized, and consciously chosen. Here, Finley parodies American societal pressures on women to channel their creativity into acceptable domestic outlets, and slyly insinuates that they will be judged on their success at manipulating such time-consuming, largely unimportant details even after their deaths.

From another perspective, the speaker in the piece is seeking to tightly control the ritual aspects that she is allowed to, since she is excluded from participation in the actual practice of the ritual. To draw a parallel: generations of American Catholic women joined all-female Altar Societies, whose members cleaned their parish churches and decorated them for major feast days, and cooked for funerals and church festivals. These societies focused on the virtues of humility and service, and provided unpaid volunteer labor for the beautification of each parish. It was a mark of parish prestige to become an Altar Society president, and competition for such titles could grow heated and hostile, since the officers had the power to allot tasks, choose dates for parish social events, and schedule the other volunteers. Yet Altar Society members—and all women-- were not allowed until after Vatican II to read during Mass, or to distribute the bread and wine at Communion, or indeed to be present upon the upper level of the church containing the [page 210] altar. Altar Societies did not focus on organizing women concerned about these injustices, nor did they provide tasks that utilized women's abilities for leadership. Instead, it could be argued that they distracted women from political and social injustice by focusing their attentions on church decorations and social events, and parish women were to some extent judged by how much time they volunteered. As American Catholicism entered the 1980's, Altar Societies largely disappeared, in part because women who were working outside the home no longer had as much time to volunteer, and in part because they sought more politically active and spiritually satisfying work within the Church.

Like some women in the Altar Societies, Finley's character is taking control of little cosmetic tasks instead of seeking active participation in life. The character's humorous obsession with details surrounding the death ritual indicates a feeling of powerlessness in relation to others' interpretation of her life. Her deepest desire is not to have others remember her accomplishments, but to admire the container that holds her remains: "I want people walking away from my funeral with tears in their eyes, saying, 'That was the most beautiful, amazingly decorated casket I've every [sic] seen.'"(37)

Both artistic creativity and self-expression are valuable talents, and interior decoration (of home or church) can provide a welcoming environment that can enhance every task performed in such a space. However, when such decoration is emphasized, to the exclusion of other meaningful tasks, the constant necessity for up-to-date appearances can be used to mask an emptiness of purpose below the surface.

In Living It Up, Finley satirizes the same focus on material objects that she parodied in such earlier performance pieces as "Steal Your BMW" (from The Constant State of Desire, 1986) and the CD recording "Enter Entrepreneur" (1994). Here, though, is parody with a difference: she has shifted the role of her speaker considerably. In the earlier pieces, the speaking character was an angry woman aggressively pursuing a high-status male and haranguing him with abusive language. By contrast, this speaker (or voice, since the piece is in print) is a female [page 211] desperate to fill the spiritual emptiness in her life with objects representing a particular ritual, and she addresses no one in particular. Finley's shift in strategy marked a move away from her reputation for portraying angry, obscene characters, a direction she pursued even further in her next performance project, The American Chestnut.

Birth and rebirth: The American Chestnut

Given the wide variety of subject matter Finley has covered in a career that has spanned three decades, it is interesting to note that she sometimes focuses on birth and creation in the later part of her career, a shift from her earlier works focusing on the violence, abuse, and sexual discrimination many women face daily. While these topics are never completely absent from her work, Finley's more recent pieces contain sections devoted to the possibility of rebirth.

By choosing the title of The American Chestnut, Finley chose to honor a species of tree which has survived serious blight; one immediately obvious parallel is to the American arts community, which in the mid-1990's was just beginning to emerge from the devastation of the AIDS epidemic and the culture wars. A section from the title piece:

We have something else to celebrate tonight. A miracle has happened. The American chestnut has bloomed for the first time in over 75 years! You see, the American chestnut was once the most common tree in America. But a blight wiped out nearly every tree. This tree has survived. The disease causes the tree to never mature, but to continually send up new shoots, trying to survive. This is a very special accomplishment for this tree, to be able to bloom.(38)

A major theme of The American Chestnut is survival: surviving AIDS, surviving loss, surviving the aging process. Finley's focus on how humans survive tragedy, and her own recent entry into motherhood, led her down new creative paths as an artist.

[page 212] One of Finley's close friends and fellow artists, David Wojnarowicz, died of AIDS in 1992: "Losing David was particularly hard. He and I had both lost our fathers to suicide and we both did political and sexual work and had similar convictions. I felt closer to him artistically than any other artist."(39) Wojnarowicz was also raised Catholic, and drew on that language in his own artistic work. In 1993, when Finley began work on The American Chestnut, one of the pieces was dedicated to him. The section entitled "David" alludes briefly to the rituals of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, the final confession and anointing with oils that Catholics receive before they die (if circumstances allow). "David" also contains repetition of Finley's earlier, desolate motif of unsuccessful prayers:

Requests, Resolutions, Absolution, Confession.
These are all words of forgiveness, of I'm sorry.
These are things people ask of themselves at death—but you
asked them of us and yourself your entire life.(40)

At the end of "David," the speaker recalls the moment of his death:

Time and emotions stood still in their intensity,
like a floodgate, like a too-full balloon.
I'm disappearing, I'm disappearing, I'm disappearing, he said.
You will become something else, Tom said.
David always said death is just the dispersal of energy.(41)

Finley captures what it was like to be at Wojnarowicz' bedside, listening to the final conversation between the artist and his lover, Tom Rauffenbart. In the vaccilation between "You will become something else" and "death is just the dispersal of energy," Finley's words suggest a fundamental human uncertainty, a wondering about death that humans are never [page 213] fully freed from at any time in their lives. The Anointing of the Sick, which practicing Roman Catholics use to mark the approaching end of a life, can sometimes provide solace, inner peace, and closure, but it does not always succeed. In writing "David," Finley expressed the lack of comfort sometimes remaining after this final ritual is complete, but also noted a seed of hope in those who remained behind.

Talking with Karen Finley: April 2002 Interview

In April 2002, I saw Finley's latest work, Shut Up and Love Me. The interview Finley gave me the day after the performance revealed much about how she wished her material to be interpreted. She was very concerned that I might consider any of her works "and go, 'Oh, it's a crucifix, it's Catholic.'" (Somewhat ironically, a crucifix is a uniquely Catholic religious icon consisting of a depiction of Jesus' body mounted on a cross. Other Christian churches use an empty cross as symbol.) In responding to various questions about her religious experiences and how she used them in her work, she emphasized the use of Catholic language as a shared language for parody, and to the Catholic Church as a familiar institution to her audiences. Occasionally, she would begin to reveal personal experiences, but would quickly change the subject. She mentioned that she had had her daughter baptized Catholic, but immediately pulled back, saying, "This [question] seems to be more about my personal life than about my work."(42) My impression was that she wished to keep any aspects of what she considered her "personal life" separate from our interview, and that any relevance or significance that Catholicism still held for her in its rituals or practices was a private matter outside the scope of our discussion. She was, however, willing to discuss her differences of opinion with the Catholic Church:

I'm just not interested in raising my daughter in a church where they don't allow women to—I can't be hypocritical. I had her baptized as a ritual, but I don't know that I'll even choose, I don't want that burden, that situation where they tell her one thing and I'm doing something different, that confusion. I am pro-choice, I am [page 214] pro-gays, and I have certain principles that are very very different. So that's just it.(43)

Finley has no interest in possible Church reforms, and is unfamiliar with the work of any Catholic feminist groups. Her present-day relationship with Catholicism remains publicly undefined, although her ambivalence is demonstrated in the contradiction between having her daughter baptized and refusing to raise her in the Church.

Finley's disclosures in our interview exemplify ways that some former Catholics feel the need to distance themselves politically from widely-held perceptions of the Church's views. One of these ways is to immediately clarify their own positions on controversial issues such as reproductive rights and homosexual rights. (The success of this differentiation rests on the listener's assumption that no one within the Church shares their positions, which the works of groups like Catholics for a Free Choice and Dignity demonstrate is patently untrue.) The second common distancing method involves a preference not to be classified in relation to religion, or a conscious disavowing of religious components of personal identity.

This analysis includes both a consideration of the influences of Catholicism on Finley's work, and her own self-perceptions and identifications in relation to her career. Without serving as an apologist for the Catholic Church, I respectfully disagree with Finley. While she is wary of connecting herself publicly in any way with her former religion, perhaps for good reasons, I believe that elements of Catholicism appear in several of her works, and that study of these elements should be incorporated into analyses of her performance in order to illuminate the ruptures in belief structures and the creation of replacement rituals that these works exemplify. Religion has also played a role in audience interpretations of her art, especially her earlier, more political works. As exemplified by the Congressmen who authored the NEA decency clause, religious and political conservatism can directly color the public interpretation of artwork and affect an artist's career; however, further research is needed to investigate the complex relationships between American religions and American performance art.

[page 215] Conclusion

The performance tactics that made Finley infamous have been integral to her work since her earliest days at the Danceteria. From getting audiences to shut up and pay attention, to Shut Up and Love Me, Finley's work derives its confrontational nature largely from her judicious, calculated use of direct address, obscene language, and nudity. There is nothing she is afraid to say, no word too obscene to speak, if it serves her larger purposes. And she does have larger purposes: to awaken, to challenge, to confront, to speak out against a world of injustice. The question has always been: do these tactics work more against her than they do for her?

Their use clearly alienated the religious right and the political conservatives who led the charge in the NEA trials. The liabilities of Finley's methods are several; perhaps the most critical is that potential audiences are sharply divided over her style and content, even before they become aware of her underlying messages. Second, serving as a national flashpoint in the NEA debates has had severe consequences for Finley's health and personal life, including a stress-related miscarriage and a divorce. Because her tactics were calculated to draw attention, and because they succeeded, Finley found herself at the center of a particular historical moment in American culture. She spent eight years fighting a battle for freedom of artistic expression that, in the end, was lost.

Finley's performance tactics have brought her art the rewards of fame, and brought her messages increased exposure. She no longer needs to depend on federal, state, or local grants to make a living as an artist; her political notoriety has added to her desirability as a guest artist and lecturer on college campuses across the United States. Finley's name recognition eases the process of getting her written works published and her artworks shown in galleries and museums. This is not to suggest that the merit of her works is dependent on her fame, but rather to make the point that artists who become famous gain much larger critical audiences who can debate the merits of their works. If Finley fails to win over all those audience members, she succeeds in maintaining the ability to question audience preconceptions about herself, her work, and its interpretation. Studying the Catholic elements in her work makes it [page 216] possible to pinpoint her tactics and identify some of her underlying creative motivations. Without such study, any analysis of the body of her work would be incomplete.

Endnotes

1. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.
2. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.
3. Eleanor Heartney, "Blood, Sex and Blasphemy: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art," New Art Examiner 26.6 (Mar 1999): 36.
4. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.
5. For one example, see "Outrageous Performance" in Theodore Shank, Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002).
6. C. Carr, "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts," reprinted in Acting Out: Feminist Performances eds. Lynda Hart and Peggy Phelan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993): 141-151.
7. Various performance and visual art critics have examined the NEA 4 trials in great detail; for Finley's own description, see "Politics" in Karen Finley and Annie Leibovitz, A Different Kind of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley (New York, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2001): 99-105. For other artists' takes on being plaintiffs in the NEA 4 trials, see Holly Hughes' performance piece Preaching to the Perverted (2000), and Tim Miller's writings on the trials at http://members.aol.com/millertale/timmillerNEA.html.
8. Interview by Carlo McCormick of Finley and David Wojnarowicz, Paper, October 1990.
9. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2000): 84.
10. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, for example, in "The NEA's Suicide Charge," 11 May 1990.
11. Stephen Holden, "Finley Mocks Her Critics in Her Art," New York Times 24 July 1990: C13.
12. Holden C13.
13. National Endowment of the Arts et al. v. Finley et al., 524 US 569, U.S. Sup. Ct. 1998. Lexis-Nexis. Accessed 14 January 2003.
14. Finley et al. v. National Endowment of the Arts, CV 90-5236, CA U.S. District Court 1992. Online. Lexis-Nexis. Accessed 14 Jan 2003.
15. Rosenberger v. Rector 515 U.S. 819, 837 (1995). Lexis-Nexis. Accessed 14 January 2003.
16. See National Endowment of the Arts v. Finley et al., 524 US 569, U.S. Sup. Ct. 1998, for full opinion.
17. Michael W. McConnell, "The Supreme Court in 1998," First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life 87 (Nov 1998): 38.
18. McConnell 39.
19. Alice Thorson, "Recent NEA decision is a defeat for self-expression and tolerance," Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 15 July 1998. Infotrac. Accessed 14 January 2003.
20. Information on many past and present politicians' religious affiliations is available at http://politicalgraveyard.com.
21. Grant Kester, "Rhetorical Questions: The Alternative Arts Sector and the Imaginary Public" Originally published in Afterimage, (January 1993) <<http://digitalarts.ucsd.edu/~gkester/Essays/rhetorical.html>>
22. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2000): 150.
23. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.
24. I contacted the Archdiocese of Los Angeles on 14 January 2003 and attempted to verify this statement through the Tribunal Office, but the tribunal official told me that excommunications are kept private between bishop and parishioner unless the Pope performs a public excommunication.
25. Karen Finley, from "In Memory Of," part of Karen Finley, and Michael Overn, A Certain Level of Denial (Rykodisc: 1992, 1994)
26. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 65.
27. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 61.
28. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 216.
29. Edward Scheer, "Performance art, life crisis rituals." http://www.realtimearts.net/rt44/scheer.html, accessed 9/05/02.
30. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2000): 158.
31. Eugene Kennedy, Tomorrow's Catholics, Yesterday's Church: The Two Cultures of American Catholicism (New York: Harper and Row, 1988): 6.
32. Thomas, Judy. "Homosexuality, AIDS, and celibacy: The Church's views." Kansas City Star 29 Jan 2000: Online at http://www.kcstar.com/projects/priests/doctrine.htm. Accessed 6 Sept 2002.
33. "Franklin Furnace In Time." http://www.franklinfurnace.org/about/about.html; accessed 6 Sept 2002.
34. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 134.
35. See interview transcript in appendix A.
36. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 177.
37. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 177.
38. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 225.
39. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 114.
40. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 214.
41. Karen Finley, A Different Kind of Intimacy (2001): 215.
42. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.
43. Karen Finley, Interview, 4 April 2002.