FESTIVAL ’90 : Earth Mother : Rosenthal Tackles the Environment, Censorship and Her Own Aging

Rachel Rosenthal, the grand doyenne of L.A. performance art, is no conspiracy theorist. Yet she’s making connections--among the environment, censorship and her own personal psyche--meant to jar a society bent on compartmentalizing its problems.

Well-known for the eco-feminist and animal-rights slant of her spectaclelike image, sound and text collages, Rosenthal has taken on the task of speaking for the biggest silent being of all: the Earth.

Her “Pangaean Dreams,” which tackles global, personal and political questions for the upcoming era, is being presented through Sunday at Santa Monica Museum of Art as part of the Los Angeles Festival. All performances are sold out. Collaborating with Rosenthal are Leslie Lashinsky, Dain Olsen and Eileen Cooley.

“The piece is presented as a shamanic journey,” Rosenthal says, seated in her West Hollywood studio with a pair of affable dogs at her feet.

“I go back 250 million years ago, when all the continents were fused together, to when Pangaea broke up and all of the continents started to move.”

The journey isn’t exclusively geological, though. Rosenthal interweaves the plight of Pangaea with her own aging process, extending the global metaphor to her recent “dismemberment.”

“I am dealing on a personal level with the realization that my body is disintegrating,” says Rosenthal, a young-looking 63-year-old given to wearing lizard-shaped earrings and other fanciful oddments.

“I have to keep readjusting my work to the kind of movements I can do now. I’ve been going through breakages of my bones and all kinds of rifts in my body. In the past year, I’ve been in total agony.”

The personal aspect doesn’t stop there, either. “I use this breaking up (of Pangaea and of her body) as a breaking up between two strong states of mind of mine that are completely in conflict.

“The convulsions we’re going through as a society now have to do with trying to create a new society out of different paradigms.

“It’s hard because of the needs of privacy, the need to pursue your own happiness, and yet somehow (you have) to create a world that will be cohesive and make sense.”

Rosenthal, who recently turned down a $11,250 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts because of a requirement that grantees sign a pledge not to make “obscene” work, says censorship is part and parcel of those “convulsions.”

“It’s difficult, but there was never any question for me,” she says of turning down the admittedly needed funds. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d taken that money, signing my name to that piece of obscenity.”

The Rubicon she faced represents a larger problem, Rosenthal says. “What is happening with the NEA is happening on so many levels in this country (that) it’s frightening. On the other hand, it’s waking people up, pushing things into a corner, making people realize the fragility and the preciousness of what we have.”

What’s at stake is freedom, Rosenthal says, herself a refugee from World War II Europe. “Where else in the world can you say and do what you can say and do in this country?

“The horrible thing is that if you don’t do something about it, if you don’t react and take action immediately, you wake up and it’s gone. This is how it works in all the countries that have had a totalitarian takeover, so I get very nervous when I see that.

“These kinds of aggressions by very toxic governments have been happening all the time,” Rosenthal says, apropos of the current U.S. military operation in the Middle East after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

“But we and other nations like ourselves seem to react only when it has to do with oil and other interests close to our economy. I’m very worried about chemical weapons. If they get started in any kind of war or skirmish over there, I’m worried it will create a precedent.”

As often in her performances, Rosenthal illustrates with a story. “It’s the example of the poor frog that is put in the water, and then the water is heated little by little and the frog doesn’t feel it because it’s a cold-blooded animal,” she says.

“When the water boils, it’s too late and the frog is dead. But if it’s done gradually, the frog doesn’t feel it.”

The American populace, Rosenthal says, hasn’t noticed the temperature rising either. “People can’t see it because everything around them seems to be OK. People have jobs and you don’t go out and actually see anything terrible happening. We try to not notice all the homeless people, people with AIDS.

“That danger is on a social level,” Rosenthal says of the connection between the political climate and other forms of global warming. “And the danger I’ve been harping about for years is an ecological danger.”

Yet, says Rosenthal, we persist in ignoring the damage we’ve done. “People get accustomed to smog, to having to buy bottled water. You still go to Baja or the high desert and see there’s all this beauty and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the Earth, the Earth is doing fine. Leave me alone, I’ve got other things to worry about.’ ”

This failure to notice--like our inattention to the changes in politics--is what Rosenthal sees as the greatest threat to the planet’s future welfare.

“Ecology and the business of freedom are things that require an effort of the imagination. You can’t be lazy.

“As a species, we’re tremendously selfish and destructive. I get very impatient with human beings; I never get impatient with all the other non-human beings.”

Still, Rosenthal thinks all this trouble may have a bright side. “In the coming decade people are probably going to take to the streets in strong and forcible ways. People will draw the line.

“I would like to be in good enough shape to live into the 21st Century because I’m extremely curious,” she says, returning to her concern with her own aging. “It’s a tremendous ‘whodunit’ living in this world. I want to know what happens next. It will be either a complete turnaround or a total debacle.”