Nationality American Known for Performance artist | Name Frank Moore Role Performance artist | |
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Full Name Frank James Moore Died October 14, 2013, Berkeley, California, United States | ||
Early frank moore
Frank James Moore (June 25, 1946 – October 14, 2013) was an American performance artist, shaman, poet, essayist, painter, musician and Internet/television personality who experimented in art, performance, ritual, and shamanistic teaching since the late 1960s.
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Moore is perhaps most notable as one of the NEA-funded artists targeted by Jesse Helms and the GAO (General Accounting Office) in the early 1990s for doing art that was labeled “obscene". Moore was featured in the 1988 cult film Mondo New York, which chronicled the leading performance artists of that period.
Moore was well known for his long (5–48 hours) ritualistic performances with audience participation, nudity, and eroticism. His influential writings on performance, art, life, and cultural subversion, his influence on the San Francisco Bay Area music and performance scene, and his performance/video archive on Vimeo.com seen by over 22 million people, further influence Moore's legacy.
Moore coined the word "eroplay" to describe physical play between adults released from the linear goals of sex and orgasm. He explored this and similar concepts in performance and ritual as a way for people to connect on a deeper level beyond the social and cultural expectations and limitations. He explored in art a way to melt isolation between people.
Moore was an underground counter-culture hero and artistic inspiration for decades. He was born with cerebral palsy, could not walk or talk, and communicated using a laser-pointer and a board of letters, numbers, and commonly used words. Using his pointer, he wrote books, directed plays, directed, acted in and edited films, and regularly gave poetry readings. Moore played piano, sang in ensemble music jams, and led bands in hard core punk clubs all along the West Coast of the United States until his death. He also produced, and exhibited across the United States and Canada, a large collection of original oil and digital paintings.
Performance artist Annie Sprinkle considers Moore one of her teachers, and Moore performed with a host of performance and underground punk figures since the 1970s including Barbara Smith, Linda Sibio, The Feederz, and Dirk Dirksen - The Pope of Punk.
Frank Moore first came to be known in the 1970s as the creator of the popular cabaret show, the "Outrageous Beauty Revue". In the 1980s Moore attended the San Francisco Art Institute where he earned his M.F.A. in Performance/Video in 1983. It was at this school that Moore discovered that the work that he had been doing for over a decade was called performance art. In 1992 he was voted Best Performance Artist by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In the early 1990s Moore was targeted by Senator Jesse Helms. From 1991 to 1999 Moore published and edited the underground zine The Cherotic (r)Evolutionary.
In addition to his books, Cherotic Magic, Art of a Shaman, Chapped Lap,Skin Passion and numerous other self-published pieces, Moore was widely published in various art and other periodicals. In artist Pamela Kay Walker's book, Moving Over the Edge, Moore is one of the artists featured as having "greatly impacted me and many people through their artistic expression and their lives."
Moore’s award-winning video works have shown throughout North America, and in 2001 he began producing shows for Berkeley’s public access channel, Berkeley Community Media, Channel 28. His shows continue to play several times each week.
In 2011, Moore launched his online performance and video retrospective on Vimeo. At the same time he created the EROART group featuring videos by eroart artists from across the world.
Frank Moore's Web of All Possibilities features a growing archive of his audio, video, visual and written work, as well as the work of other artists. He founded Love Underground Visionary Revolution (LUVeR) in 1999, a webstation combining live streaming and on-demand libraries of audio and video programming, described by Moore as a "non-corporate, d.i.y., totally uncensored, noncommercial, nonprofit internet-only communal collective with 24-hour 'live' programming (by amazing people) with 'no-limits' content." LUVeR ran until 2012.
In 2006, Moore announced his candidacy for the 2008 election for President of the United States. He became a qualified write-in candidate in 25 states. His campaign was responsible for reforming the write-in candidate qualifications and procedures in many states. His platform videos are available on YouTube.
Moore also hosted his regular internet show, Frank Moore’s Shaman’s Den. Moore describes it as a show that “will arouse, inspire, move, threaten you, not with sound bites, but with a two-hour (usually longer) feast of live streaming video. You might get an in-studio concert of bands from around the world...or poetry reading...or an in-depth conversation about politics, art, music, and LIFE with extremely dangerous people! But then you may see beautiful women naked dancing erotically. You never know, because you are in The Shaman’s Den with Frank Moore.” Video and audio archives of all of these Shaman's Den shows are available online.
Frank Moore died of pneumonia on October 14, 2013. Frank Moore performed regularly in the San Francisco Bay Area up until his death. His students and the people influenced by his life/work continue his vision.
Frank Moore’s life and art are now being documented in a web video series called Let Me Be Frank.