‘Things Impossible’: Daring, Different Kind of Lecture : Performance Art: The FCC might not approve of what Julie Lazar will show as art created for television and radio tonight at Irvine Fine Arts Center.

Anyone who shows up at the Irvine Fine Arts Center tonight expecting a slide-lecture on the past and present state of performance art is in for a surprise.

So is the Federal Communications Commission, perhaps.

“Originally, I was asked to talk about what’s going on in performance art and what’s new and what’s good,” said guest lecturer Julie Lazar, who has something else in mind for the 7 p.m. event.

While performance art can mean almost anything these days, her presentation will focus less on what is “known as performance art per se, “ and more on what she currently finds most interesting and innovative: art created for television and radio, some of which can be so controversial as to risk censorship by the FCC, Lazar said.

“Because the media of TV and radio are relatively so young, these artists are charting new territory,” said Lazar, curator of media and performing arts at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

“Oh How I Dreamt of Things Impossible,” the title of the presentation named after a drawing by William Blake, aptly describes a key point Lazar said she will attempt to illustrate with the aid of audio and video tapes.

“Things impossible” are works created for electronic media that could never be made without the airwaves, said the 38-year-old Detroit native.

“I’ll be looking mostly at work made specifically for TV and radio that exist solely for those media and wouldn’t work so well if transferred to the stage. Which isn’t to invalidate live stage work at all, but simply to convey how, when someone successfully uses these media, they can accomplish things they can’t in stage.”

Works by Laurie Anderson, a name synonymous with performance art, will figure into the evening. But Lazar, who in her post at MOCA deals constantly with intermingling and crossover of distinct art forms, will feature work by artists usually identified with other disciplines.

Several pieces written and directed specifically for TV by playwright Samuel Beckett are among the video excerpts she’ll show, for instance.

“Here’s a guy who is mostly known for theater, but he’s worked in radio and TV, and he really takes advantage of them and has really made some incredible works,” Lazar said.

For comparison’s sake, she’ll juxtapose Beckett’s “He Joe,” a 1966 TV piece, with “Killer,” a 1986 work by German video artist Gusztav Hamos.

“Beckett’s performance is so simple. It’s basically a man sitting on a couch with (the sound) of a woman’s voice whispering at him. You can’t imagine it on TV. The camera lens just comes slowly up toward the actor and he never speaks. Whereas in ‘Killer,’ all the actors speak . . . and Hamos depicts very convincingly through three actors the profound complexity of a murder’s passion.”

Using video technology, Hamos covers over the actors’ eyes with thick black bands like those used to protect criminals’ anonymity on news shows, Lazar said. Projected over the bands are scenes of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, producing an effect available only to video makers.

To demonstrate how the combination of video and dance can make possible “things impossible” for choreographers confined to the stage, video works by Merce Cunningham and other contemporary dance makers also will be shown.

In “Imaginary Dances,” choreographer Remy Charlip uses dance for radio, “inviting audiences to see dance in their mind’s eye,” said Lazar, who produced “The Territory of Art,” a series of pieces commissioned for radio now being broadcast on non-commercial stations KUSC-FM (91.5) and KCRW-FM (89.9).

“I’m also presenting works which I think could make very good use of the public (TV or radio) media but would have a hard time being there,” said Lazar, referring to two controversial radio works produced for the series that have not been aired and that she thinks could be subject to FCC censorship.

One contains adult themes and graphic language that the FCC discourages, she said, “but is a work of very strong artistic merit.”

“Almost Asleep,” by Julie Hebert, a playwright and director living in the Bay Area, is based on a woman’s struggle to cope with the “anger and fear she’s been forced to live with as a result of being raped by two men.”

But it’s also about how present-day society forces many people to deal with “any overpowering situation in one’s physical, psychic or emotional territory,” Lazar said.

“We are all forced to try to live with and negotiate with anger and fear. This is trying to call people out, to wake them up out of a sleep and into a consciousness that says they have to get beyond that anger and fear to negotiate life (with) courage. It’s an example of a work that would mean our loss if subject to censorship.”