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A Women's Place Feminist cultural activity. "There is something surrealistic about Los Angeles which has allowed us the freedom to do exactly what we are doing now; to play out the kinds of revolutionary roles we are now playing. All of the West Coast, but most particularly Los Angeles, has a crazy, optimistic, futuristic kind of hopefulness which permeates everything in it. "We all know that the world is lousy - everyone is aware of that in one way or another. In New York, where there is a climate of coping which has to do with adhering to old, rigid standards and principles of 'excellence,' there is an attempt to make things look better, without really changing them. "In Los Angeles, there are fewer lies about what is what. We live in an amorphous, ambiguous, free-wheeling and cynical kind of atmosphere that makes it possible to break through from the past into the future." Agreeing with Sheila is easy. We have accepted, many of us, (the women of "us," the strivers of "us,") that what life is about is battling for survival in a hostile environment; that, at best, what we can do is react to it, submit to it, "break even." We accept outside authority. We condition ourselves - to anger, to alienation. The work being done at the Building is based on something else. It is labelled "Feminist." It is unique and it is female. Yet it seems to be part of a revolution of values which is prevalent (on the West Coast?), and which has to do with notions of positivity, with alternatives, and with trust: "...trust that the other person we are dealing with is capable, has a will, is strong, and is able to know; trust that the environment we are dealing with is at least neutral. "We know that most art forms, most political and social forms as well, are incredibly flattening, disillusioning, inactive, not positive. Like Antonioni's 'The Passenger,' for instance. We already know how alienated we are. How will more awareness of that help make our experience or our lives more positive or more comfortable?" That was Sheila. This is Arlene: "The evolution of the Feminist art movement has had its roots in the explication of oppression, and oppression has to do with a 'pushing against' things, a rebellion, that we do when we are oppressed. "Take Womanhouse, for example. Womanhouse was all about women's oppression and victimization. The act of creating that environment, though, was an extraordinary act of collaboration. Yet the process of accomplishing that, that positive act, was not visible in the House anywhere. What was in the House was very negative. "We are very far from that. We are still interested in the outside world, in the art scene, in the realities of oppression, and of alienation, of the politics of it. But somehow it has been possible... and I think that Los Angeles has had a lot to do with this... it has been possible for us to remain separate and not be bombarded, without a hostile act of withdrawal, or of resistance, or of isolation." The FSW is not a bridge from oppression to a successful professional life for women artists; not is it in opposition to that possibility. It is an entity, an alternative, a community with different ways of being, of acting, and of creating which are made possible by a very specially structured environment. The FSW was not somebody's "good idea" either. It happened. It created itself, perhaps more than it was actually created by outside forces. "There's a layering of levels," said Arlene, "in the levels of skills, or of getting strong, or of being able to do things, of understanding Feminism, the stratified levels that people actually go through. "We've always described the FSW as a support system - that you would come into a support group of women as part of your 'rite of passage,' in a way. "It just recently dawned on me, after all this time, that women come to the FSW, not in a situation of support; that in the entire experience that a woman has in the world, or in her family or her profession as the world, from wherever she's coming from, she is in a condition of oppression. "And that's the first thing that happens to women coming into the Program... They oppress the hell out of each other. It made me understand how the FSW is perfect, how it works, and how people who are going through whatever it is they are going through there, is exactly what needs to happen. "We have isolated four topics: authority, money, work and sexuality, as things that come up for women as soon as they get to the Workshop, with all kinds of offshoots from that - like being angry, like thinking that somebody was doing it to you. All of that comes up as you are asked to be able to support other people and yourself. "I think that the process of the FSW could be described as a process whereby a woman comes in in a condition of oppression, her own oppression, her oppression of herself and her oppression of other people, and moves from there into a position where she can experience and be capable of mutual support. "And I would say that what we're developing is a relatively new kind of environment which is based on a situation of camraderie, of going forwards, not backwards into isolated levelling, or commonality, which the Woman's Movement, in general, has been involved with for some time. That has partly come out of the experience of consciousness-raising activities in which there has been the comfort of equality, of egalitarianism, of loss of those aspects of responsibility and authority which come with expressing one's individuality. "The kind of camraderie we are talking about comes out of a sense of self, a solid sense of self, which then develops into an extended sense of self, where one is willing and able to take responsibility not only for one's own individual acts and creations, but for creating the context, the society, in which those acts and creations will be seen. "I personally had a great deal of difficulty doing the specific, physical things which that camraderie involves: fund-raising, writing correspondence, 34 NEWORLD/FALL 1975
