Frank James Moore (June 25, 1946 – October 14, 2013) was an American

performance artist Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

, painter, musician and

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

/television personality who experimented in art, performance, ritual, and shamanistic teaching since the late 1960s. Moore was one of the NEA-funded artists targeted by Jesse Helms and the GAO (General Accounting Office) in the early 1990s for creating art that was labeled "obscene". He was featured in the 1988 cult film '' Mondo New York'', which chronicled the leading performance artists of that period.

Life and career

Moore was born with

cerebral palsy Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sens ...

, 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 Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

clubs all along the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

until his death. He also produced, and exhibited across the United States and Canada, a large collection of original oil and digital paintings. Moore was known for his long (5–48 hours) ritualistic performances with audience participation, nudity, and eroticism. His writings on performance, art, life, and cultural subversion, and his performance/video archive on Vimeo.com seen by over 32 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. Frank Moore first came to be known in the 1970s as the creator of the popular

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining o ...

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. At this school 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 . 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 Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software a ...

. At the same time he created the “Nude Performance Art, Dance and Video: EROART” group on Vimeo featuring videos by eroart artists from across the world. Eroart is a word coined by Frank Moore to describe art that embraces nudity, eroticism, sexuality, physical play, love, the body, passion for life, pleasure, and is distinguished from pornography.Moore, Frank
"Eroart, Not Porn"
from “Frankly Speaking; A Collection of Essays, Writings and Rants”, Inter-Relations, 2014. Pg.81 ISBN 978-1495443381 The word eroart first appears in an essay by Moore written in 1984, “Eroplay in Life and Art”, then in “Eroart” (1984), and later in “Eroart Not Porn” (1986). Moore's Vimeo account was terminated by

in August 2019. Starting that same month, all of the videos have been moved to the Frank Moore Archives on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. 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 A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be po ...

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 YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. 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. He performed regularly in the San Francisco Bay Area up until his death.

Influence and legacy

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's life and art are now being documented in a web video series called ''Let Me Be Frank''. As of September 2017, Frank Moore's work is now being archived at the Bancroft Library at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. The collection is titled “Frank Moore papers, approximately 1970-2013.” In April 2018, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) accepted two of Frank's oil paintings into their permanent collection: ''Mariah'' (1977), and ''Patti Smith'' (1979). In 2019, a collection of Frank Moore's work was archived at the Performistanbul Live Art Research Space in Istanbul, Turkey. As of November 2022, a documentary film about Frank Moore by Keith Wilson is currently in production and is expected to premiere in 2024.

References

External links

*
Frank Moore's Web Of All PossibilitiesFrank Moore Archives on archive.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Frank (Performance Artist) 1946 births 2013 deaths American performance artists 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters American male poets Artists from Columbus, Ohio Artists from San Francisco Candidates in the 2008 United States presidential election 21st-century American politicians California Independents Deaths from pneumonia in California American male essayists 20th-century American poets 20th-century American essayists Artists with disabilities 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American male artists

Life and career

Influence and legacy

References

Further reading

External links