Johanna Went

Johanna Went is one of the true legends of the California underground — the self-styled "hyena of performance art" whose riotous, gore-splattered spectacles fused punk, noise music, and performance into something wholly her own. Raised in Seattle, she began performing in 1975 with Tom Murrin's improvisational theater troupes, touring North America and Europe before settling in Los Angeles in 1977. There she became a central figure of the LA punk scene, performing roughly 200 shows through the late 1970s and '80s at venues like the Hong Kong Café, Al's Bar, Club Lingerie, the Whisky, and LACE — appearing on the cover of Slash magazine along the way. Working with longtime collaborator and composer Mark Wheaton, Went built each show around fantastical costumes and grotesque props scavenged from dumpsters, fake blood, crude puppetry, and largely wordless, improvised mayhem that blended experimental music, sculpture, and New Wave theater. Her influence radiates through punk, post-punk, and industrial music — critics have noted that Lady Gaga's 2010 meat dress looked like something Went would have done in 1982. Her debut record Hyena (1982) was reissued in 2020 alongside Passion Container, a major retrospective of her costumes, props, and performance archive at the Box gallery in Los Angeles.