Following Elrick and Toscano was art critic John Perreault, a friend and colleague of Weiner’s who participated in Weiner’s 1969 “Open House,” the event for which Durgin’s collection is named, and which also featured Vito Acconci and Arakawa among other notable artists. In Perreault’s presentation he highlighted Weiner’s involvement with the performance-based climate of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to reenacting the semaphore language of Weiner’s Code Poems by waving flags fashioned from dish-rags, Perreault recalled some of Weiner’s other performance works. These works included a collaborative “Fashion Show Poetry Event” where Weiner presented a cape with hundreds of pockets proclaiming “one should wear their own luggage.” A piece where Weiner waited in a specified location in New York City to meet her doppelganger, Hannah Weiner, a “psychodramatist” sharing Weiner’s name who she found in the phone book. As Perreault noted, Weiner’s name-sake never showed-up for the meeting. A work where the audience viewed a ping-pong match from the side of only one player, and a similar work where the audience was asked to listen to one side of a phone conversation. Another where Weiner waited on a street corner dressed as a prostitute, only instead of soliciting customers she threw “stars” onto the sidewalk. The last of Weiner’s performances described by Perreault was one in which Weiner distributed free hotdogs in front of a hotdog stand called “Weiner’s Wieners” and a durational performance involving a long, extemporized speech about “anxiety”.

In the next two presentations, Weiner’s three-time publisher and tireless supporter, James Sherry, publisher of Roof Books and mastermind behind the ongoing Segue reading series (now housed at Bowery Poetry Club) talked about his relationship with Weiner during the preparation of her book, Little Books/Indians. To close, he read a poem by Weiner invoking the American Indian Movement (AIM) leader, Leonard Peltier, an acquaintance of Weiner’s who remains imprisoned to this day accused of murder and treason by the U.S. government.

In her presentation, poet Anne Tardos read a selection from Weiner’s early 70’s diary, The Fast, in which Weiner first begins to have the visionary experiences that would lead to her later “clairvoyant” writings. The Fast takes place over a month-long period and is both a lived (that is, suffered) durational performance and the text that survives the performance through Lewis Warsh’s United Artist Books. Hearing The Fast read aloud, I was struck by the urgency of Weiner’s bodily and psychic circumstances as she navigated consumer culture, purchasing ordinary household items from the supermarket that would either cause her pain or offer her relief from her personal hell (The Fast was originally subtitled “The Hell Manuscript”). During her Bardo Weiner feels, synaesthesiacally, colors emanating from objects in her environment. That Weiner’s “durational performance” was terminated by cops breaking down the door of her apartment punctuates the importance of The Fast as a transitional point in Weiner’s “transformation” from equipped New York School poet to postmodern Kabbalist.