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Johanna Went
Johanna Went
Johanna Went
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Johanna Went is an American performance artist who primarily works in the Los Angeles area. [1][2][3]

She started her career in the late 1970s as musician in the punk scene. Music is still an important element of her shows. She has often worked with musician Mark Wheaton, whose fast, rhythmic music beats provide the background noise in several of her performances. Further predominant elements of Went's shows are the use of elaborate costumes, which Went herself creates from various found objects, and the use of artificial blood. The latter played an especially important role in her early work. Went's performances are not strictly text-based. She typically works based on a sketch that determines the rough sequence of actions, but leaves much room for improvisation. Went rarely uses language in her shows as means of communication. She rather sings, screams, whines and murmurs, thus rendering large parts of the spoken words incomprehensible.[4]

In a typical show Went goes through several costume changes, dances, jumps around, sings, plays with often very big props that she frequently tears apart and tosses into the auditorium. Several of her shows culminate in the pouring of artificial blood over her own body, costumes and props. Went's performances thus could be said to foreground the aesthetic quality of fast, spontaneous bodily movement and the material quality of voice and words. The creation of a certain dynamic or energy on stage as well as a certain formalist concern with the quality of colors and material take priority over conveying any particular message.[5][6][7]

Critics have frequently characterized Went's shows as "chaotic", "wild" or "shocking". Her work is often seen in context of other women artists of the 1980s, whose performances are regarded as daring and transgressive, such as Karen Finley, Lydia Lunch, Diamanda Galas or Dancenoise.

Selected performances

[edit]
  • Hyena (1982)
  • Knifeboxing (1984)
  • Interview with Monkey Woman (1986)
  • Primate Prisoners (1987)
  • Twin, Travel, Terror (1987)
  • Ablutions of a Nefarious Nature (2007)

Several of Went's early performances can be seen on her DVD Johanna Went: Club Years (Soleilmoon Recordings, 2007).

References

[edit]
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Johanna Went

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''Johanna Went'' is an American performance artist known for her anarchic, grotesque, and ritualistic performances that defined the Los Angeles underground punk and no-wave scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s. Her wildly chaotic shows featured hand-sewn costumes crafted from found objects and dumpster discards, gallons of fake blood, giant props, soiled tampons thrown into audiences, and stream-of-consciousness vocalizations accompanied by intense improvised music, often blending horror, dark humor, and visceral provocation. Went began her artistic career in 1975 with improvisational street theater troupes such as Para-Troupe and the World’s Greatest Theater Company, traveling across America and Europe before relocating to Los Angeles in 1977. There, she transitioned to solo performances, incorporating live musical collaborators including percussionist Z’EV and longtime partner Mark Wheaton, who provided jagged, industrial soundscapes for her acts. Her signature pieces, including Hyena (1982) and Passion Container (1988), combined rapid costume changes, ritualistic movements, monstrous puppets, and bodily fluids to transgress boundaries of gender, bodily norms, and performance conventions. Active primarily through the 1980s and into the 2000s, Went headlined influential venues such as the Hong Kong Café, the Whisky, and Club Lingerie, building a cult following in the experimental club circuit while also appearing at institutions like Franklin Furnace and Lincoln Center. Described as the “hyena of performance art,” her work has been celebrated for its raw energy and influence on punk, post-punk, and industrial culture, earning her recognition as a legend of the California underground and inspiring later artists with its fearless, boundary-pushing aesthetics. A 2020 retrospective exhibition titled Passion Container at The Box in Los Angeles, accompanied by reissues of her recordings, brought renewed attention to her archive of costumes, sculptures, and performance documentation.

Early life

Birth and early years

Johanna Went was born in 1949 in Buffalo, New York. She grew up in Seattle, Washington. Limited additional details about her early life are available from public sources, with her biography focusing primarily on her later development as a self-taught performance artist.

Career

Entry into performance art

Johanna Went entered performance art in the mid-1970s through her participation in improvisational street theater troupes. In 1975, she began performing with Para-Troupe and the World's Greatest Theater Company, groups that focused on spontaneous, public interventions. These early experiences involved traveling across America and Europe, providing her with foundational exposure to live, interactive, and unconventional presentation formats. Following her relocation to Los Angeles in 1977, Went shifted to solo performances, immersing herself in the city's intersecting punk and experimental art communities. Her earliest documented solo appearance took place that year at John's Place in Los Angeles, where she presented an untitled piece that introduced elements of her emerging style. As a self-taught artist, she drew directly from her street theater background to create works featuring found props, hand-sewn costumes, and chaotic, ritualistic actions. Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Went began collaborating with percussionist Z'EV and composer Mark Wheaton, who supplied live improvised music and became long-term partners in her performances. This integration of sound and movement helped define her transition from ensemble-based street work to independent, multidisciplinary acts tailored to club and alternative venues.

1980s Los Angeles performances

Johanna Went became a central figure in the Los Angeles punk and experimental performance scene during the 1980s, staging chaotic and visceral live shows at underground clubs and venues across the city. She performed at key locations including Club Lingerie, the Hong Kong Cafe, Al's Bar, The Whisky, On Klub, Beyond Baroque, the Music Machine, John's Place, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Her work often incorporated live improvised music, with long-term collaborator Mark Wheaton providing synthesizers, tape loops, and sound mixes, alongside other musicians such as Z'EV (early percussion), Greg Burk (saxophone), Robin Ryan (drums and percussion), and Joe Berardi (percussion). Went's 1980s output was prolific, with estimates of around 200 total performances from 1977 through the 1980s, most occurring in Los Angeles club settings. Specific documented shows include a 1980 appearance at New Wave Theater with Brock Wheaton on drums and Mark Wheaton on Steiner Parker synthesizer, a December 30, 1981 performance at Al's Bar, and a 1982 show at On Klub. In 1982 she performed at UCLA Live with Mark Wheaton and Brock Wheaton, and in 1983 at The Box with an ensemble including Mark Wheaton, Joe Berardi, Jonathan Gold (cello), Hans Christian (bass), and Greg Burk (clarinet). A notable 1984 performance titled "Knifeboxing" took place at Club Lingerie, featuring Mark Wheaton on tape loops and sound mix, Greg Burk on saxophone, and Robin Ryan on percussion. Her late-1980s work included the 1988 performance "Passion Container," presented with collaborators Peggy Farrar and Stephen Holman, and music by Greg Burk (saxophone), Robin Ryan (drums), and Mark Wheaton (tapes and synth), known for its ritualistic elements and audience engagement with oversized props. Many of these shows were captured on video, including footage directed by Shirley Clarke at venues like UCLA Live in 1982 and The Box in 1983. Went's frequent club appearances solidified her reputation in the downtown Los Angeles experimental scene throughout the decade.

Post-1980s work and documentation

After her most active period of live performances in the 1980s, Johanna Went continued to appear occasionally in the following decades, though with decreasing frequency. She presented a performance at Lincoln Center in New York in 1991. Her final documented live performance was Ablutions of a Nefarious Nature, staged at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles in 2007, after which she retired from performing due to an ankle injury and arthritis. Documentation of Went's earlier work emerged in several formats during the 2000s and beyond. Soleilmoon Recordings released the DVD/CD compilation Johanna Went: Club Years, featuring 80 minutes of live video footage from her performances at clubs and galleries in Los Angeles and other cities between 1977 and 1987, including pieces shot by director Shirley Clarke; the package also included audio commentary by Went and collaborator Mark Wheaton, a slideshow of photos, and a bonus CD collecting her studio recordings, such as a remastered Hyena and earlier singles. In 2020, a limited-edition reissue of her 1982 EP Hyena appeared on red vinyl through Box Editions. Archival and retrospective efforts have preserved and recontextualized her oeuvre. The exhibition Passion Container at The Box in Los Angeles, on view from January 25 to March 14, 2020, displayed costumes, soft sculptures, ephemera, and documentation from across her career, including video projections of early performances. As of 2020, Went was organizing, editing, and preserving her audio, video, and photographic archives with long-time collaborator Mark Wheaton, while also producing drawings for new costumes and spoken word pieces; the exhibition's reception prompted her to consider future collaborations with younger dancers and performers.

Artistic style

Performance elements and techniques

Johanna Went's performances are distinguished by their use of handmade costumes, grotesque props, and crude puppetry, all contributing to a chaotic and visually overwhelming stage presence. Her costumes are typically constructed from discarded materials scavenged from streets and dumpsters, hand-sewn to create fantastical, absurdist designs that combine craft with invention. She frequently incorporates rapid costume changes during her acts, shifting between elaborate outfits that enhance the frenetic energy of the performance. Props often include gallons of fake blood, streams of multicolored liquids, oversized containers, and giant soiled tampons, which she deploys in messy, excessive interactions that spill across the stage. Went integrates larger-than-life puppets and demented Muppet-like soft sculptures into her work, frequently crafting enormous sewn fabric figures that serve as central elements of the spectacle. These puppets and sculptures, sometimes grotesque or exaggerated in form, are manipulated physically or positioned to interact with her movements and the surrounding space. Live improvised music forms a core component of her performances, with collaborators providing jagged, intense soundscapes ranging from No Wave beats and industrial noise to electronic textures. She delivers stream-of-consciousness vocals over this backing, often incorporating grunts, howls, and ecstatic vocalizations that blend with the driving rhythms. Physically, Went employs frantic, chaotic movement, including gyrating, jumping, and ecstatic bouncing dances, while smearing or interacting with viscous substances and liquids. Her performances are structured as high-energy, fast-paced events, typically short and anarchic in flow, with elements of audience interaction such as flinging large props or volleying objects into the crowd.

Themes and influences

Johanna Went's performance art is characterized by recurring grotesque and anarchic elements, often described as a "theater of the grotesque" that incorporates monstrous and surreal imagery, such as hybrid creatures, deformed figures, and disturbing juxtapositions of religious and bodily symbols. Her work draws heavily on a punk attitude, manifesting in chaotic, improvisational structures, unscripted vocalizations, and a synthesis of avant-garde performance with punk and industrial soundscapes, creating spectacles of social anarchy and boundary transgression. Feminist motifs appear consistently, including explorations of feminine tropes such as the mother and virgin, with faux-sacrificial and menstrual blood conflated in rituals that address bodily pollution, monstrous femininity, and threats from monstrous masculinity. These themes engage taboo subjects like menstruation and female pleasure through visceral, scatological means, often using polluting objects to disrupt conventional classifications and evoke both horror and hilarity. Went has emphasized the humorous aspect of her extreme content, remarking in a 1983 interview that she finds much of her material funny and expressing astonishment at audience disgust: "I cannot believe that people are disgusted by certain things … I just can’t! … I almost laugh during the whole show." Her work emerged within the Los Angeles punk and underground scenes, reflecting the anarchic energy and experimental ethos of that milieu, though specific artistic influences remain primarily observed by critics rather than explicitly stated by the artist.

Film and television

Credits and appearances

Johanna Went has made occasional appearances in independent films and other media, typically in small or cameo roles that reflect her distinctive performance persona. She is credited as an actress in Du-beat-e-o (1984), where she played Benny's Nightmare. Her work also includes a role in the short Performance (1982). Went appeared in several films directed by Gregg Araki, including The Living End (1992), Totally F***ed Up (1993), and The Doom Generation (1995) as the Carnoburger Co-Worker. Additional credits include The Vagrant (1992) and Vamps (2012), in which she portrayed the Rat Eating Woman. She appeared as herself in Iconoclast (2010). These screen appearances are generally brief and often feature eccentric characters, providing a limited extension of her live performance work into filmed media. No major television credits or leading roles are documented in reliable sources.

Personal life

Later years and privacy

Johanna Went continued performing into the 1990s and less frequently into the 2000s. Her last documented live performance was Ablutions Of A Nefarious Nature at Track 16 Gallery in 2007. She stopped performing after that show due to an ankle injury and arthritis. Since 2007, she has maintained a low public profile with limited public appearances. She lives in Ventura, California, as of 2022. In recent years she has focused on drawings for new costumes, writing and performing spoken word pieces, and organizing her audio, video, and photographic archives with longtime collaborator Mark Wheaton. Occasional retrospectives, screenings, and discussions of her work have appeared, including a major retrospective exhibition titled Passion Container at The Box in Los Angeles in 2020 and a podcast interview in 2022 in which she reflected on her career. These engagements focus primarily on her historical contributions rather than personal details, current residence, or ongoing projects.

Legacy

Recognition and impact

Johanna Went has long been regarded as a cult figure and underground legend within the Los Angeles punk and performance art scenes of the 1980s, where her anarchic, boundary-pushing performances built a dedicated following. Critics have described her as one of the true legends of the California underground, emphasizing that her searing presence was essential to the histories of punk, post-punk, and industrial music. Despite this influence, her work has often remained under-documented and deserving of wider renown, with observers noting that in a just world she would be as much a household name as Lady Gaga. She received early institutional support through a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in 1985. Her contributions have been documented in key publications, including a substantial interview in the 1983 RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook. Renewed attention arrived in 2020 with the retrospective exhibition Passion Container at The Box gallery in Los Angeles, which presented costumes, ephemera, and video screenings from her archive, reacquainting her with audiences and prompting a limited-edition reissue of her 1982 album Hyena. Her performances were also featured in a dedicated cinema series at Artists Space, screening nine video documents spanning 1977 to 1992 and underscoring her significance in experimental and punk-adjacent art practices. Critics have positioned Went's grotesque, sexualized, and ritualistic style as a precursor to later transgressive works, with Lady Gaga's 2010 meat dress evoking her earlier provocative use of materials and prompting comparisons that highlight her underrecognized influence. Her confrontational feminist elements, such as the use of menstrual imagery and audience-directed props in pieces like Passion Container (1988), predated similar tactics in riot grrrl and by artists like Peaches.
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