Carolee Schneemann: Daylong Tribute Screening

Carolee Schneemann: Daylong Tribute Screening
Carolee Schneemann: Daylong Tribute Screening


   

Thursday, May 9, 2019
10 am – 6 pm

541 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011


Free admission


EAI will honor Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) with a daylong screening of her film and video work, tracing fifty years of her career, from 1962 to 2012. The program, which spans the many decades of her extraordinary, ferociously pathbreaking approach to performance and the moving image, will screen twice, from 10am to 2pm and again, from 2pm to 6pm. Following the screening, guests will be invited to P•P•O•W’s 6th floor gallery space for their opening of Tooth and Paw, a show of works by Schneemann’s beloved feline companion, La Niña, visualized by Schneemann during the last year of her life.

This event is free and open to the public.

In a career that spanned roughly six decades and multiple disciplines – encompassing painting, sculpture, writing, performance, photography, film, video, and multimedia installations – Schneemann challenged taboos and traditions through her fiercely unapologetic, visionary work. Her early and prescient investigations into themes of gender and sexuality, identity and subjectivity, and the cultural biases of art history, as well as her fearless work bearing witness to war and political violence, laid the groundwork for an inestimable number of artists who would follow in her path. Her influence, cited by artists as varied as Barbara Hammer, Martha Rosler, VALIE EXPORT, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist, and Ragnar Kjartansson, is impossible to overstate.

Early films Viet-Flakes (1962-67, re-edited 2015) and Snows (1967-2009), unflinching responses to the atrocities of the Vietnam War, look forward to a lifelong examination of political violence, in Lebanon, Palestine, Sarajevo, Haiti, in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and, most recently, in Syria.

The celebrated and notorious Meat Joy (1964, re-edited 2010), as well as Water Light/Water Needle (Lake Mah Wah, NJ) (1966), Body Collage (1967), and Illinois Central Transposed (1968-69), document Schneemann’s contributions to what she termed “kinetic theater” and to performance in the 1960s, perhaps most famously through her involvement with Judson Dance Theater. Originally shot on film in 1964 and re-edited on video in 2010, Meat Joy also represents the fruitful collaboration between Schneemann and artist Trevor Shimizu (then Technical Director at EAI), one of many videos Schneemann would edit at EAI.

The program will also include the “Autobiographical Trilogy,” Fuses (1964-67), Plumb Line (1968-71), and Kitch’s Last Meal (1973-76). Among her most influential and controversial works, the self-shot erotic film Fuses would radically transform the treatment of sex and sexuality in cinema, anticipating theorizations of a female gaze by nearly a decade. Schneemann would later write, “Perhaps because Fuses was made by a woman, of her own life, it is both a sensuous and equitable interchange; neither person is ‘subject’ or ‘object.’” Schneemann would recall, “After one of the first screenings of Fuses, a young woman thanked me for the film. … Fuses let her feel her own sexual curiosity as something natural and … she now thought she might begin to experience her own physical integrity in ways she had longed for.”

Fuses may represent a female gaze, but it is also structured by the gaze of Kitch, Schneemann’s cat and muse, as Kitch watches Schneemann and her partner James Tenney’s lovemaking. The first of Schneemann’s “muse-cats,” Kitch is mourned in Schneemann’s longest film – and one of her most powerful – the dual projection Kitch’s Last Meal. The film also includes some of Schneemann’s most incisive commentary on the status of women artists, which would reappear in her artist’s book, Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter, and in her performance piece, Interior Scroll. Schneemann revisits the original 1975 Interior Scroll performance in her 1995 video Interior Scroll – The Cave. Two more “muse-cats” are featured in Infinity Kisses – The Movie (2008), in which Schneemann shares kisses with her cats Cluny and Vesper. Holland Cotter, writing in the New York Times, contends that Infinity Kisses – The Movie, edited by Schneemann at EAI in 2008, “may be her most unguardedly sensual work.”

The program will also feature Schneemann’s performative lectures, the embodied and conceptual approach to the lecture as artwork she pioneered. Including Ask the Goddess (1991), Vulva’s School (1995), Mysteries of the Pussies (1998-2010), and Americana I Ching Apple Pie (2007), the program concludes with Pinea Silva (2012), performed as part of EAI’s 40th Anniversary Benefit in December 2011.  

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Program

10:00 am


10:10 am


10:20 am


10:50 am


11:00 am


11:05 am


11:25 am


11:40 am


11:55 am


12:50 pm


1:00 pm


1:05 pm


1:15 pm


1:20 pm


1:40 pm


1:50 pm


2:00 pm


2:10 pm


2:20 pm


2:50 pm


3:00 pm


3:05 pm


3:25 pm


3:40 pm


3:55 pm


4:50 pm


5:00 pm


5:05 pm


5:15 pm


5:20 pm


5:40 pm


5:50 pm


 

Viet-Flakes
1962-67 (re-edited 2015), 8:31 min, toned b&w, 16 mm film on HD video

Meat Joy
1964 (re-edited 2010), 10:33 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video

Fuses
1964-67, 29:37 min, color, silent, 16 mm film on HD video

Water Light/Water Needle (Lake Mah Wah, NJ)
1966, 11:13 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Body Collage
1967, 4:12 min, b&w, silent, 16 mm film on video

Snows
1967-2009, 20:24 min, color and b&w, sound, 16 mm film on video

Illinois Central Transposed
1968-69, 18:15 min, color, 16 mm film on video

Plumb Line
1968-71, 14:27 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Kitch's Last Meal (Composite)
1973-76, 54:11 min, color, sound, Super 8mm film on HD video

Ask the Goddess
1991, 8:24 min, color, sound

Interior Scroll - The Cave
1995, 7:31 min, color, sound

Vulva's School
1995, 7:15 min, color, sound

Mysteries of the Pussies
1998-2010, 7:43 min, color, sound

Americana I Ching Apple Pie
2007, 16:37 min, color, sound

Infinity Kisses - The Movie
2008, 9:18 min, color, sound, HD video

Pinea Silva
2012, 9:24 min, color, sound, HD video

Viet-Flakes
1962-67 (re-edited 2015), 8:31 min, toned b&w, 16 mm film on HD video

Meat Joy
1964 (re-edited 2010), 10:33 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on video

Fuses
1964-67, 29:37 min, color, silent, 16 mm film on HD video

Water Light/Water Needle (Lake Mah Wah, NJ)
1966, 11:13 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Body Collage
1967, 4:12 min, b&w, silent, 16 mm film on video

Snows
1967-2009, 20:24 min, color and b&w, sound, 16 mm film on video

Illinois Central Transposed
1968-69, 18:15 min, color, 16 mm film on video

Plumb Line
1968-71, 14:27 min, color, sound, 16 mm film on HD video

Kitch's Last Meal (Composite)
1973-76, 54:11 min, color, sound, Super 8mm film on HD video

Ask the Goddess
1991, 8:24 min, color, sound

Interior Scroll - The Cave
1995, 7:31 min, color, sound

Vulva's School
1995, 7:15 min, color, sound

Mysteries of the Pussies
1998-2010, 7:43 min, color, sound

Americana I Ching Apple Pie
2007, 16:37 min, color, sound

Infinity Kisses - The Movie
2008, 9:18 min, color, sound, HD video

Pinea Silva
2012, 9:24 min, color, sound, HD video


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Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), founded in 1971, is a nonprofit resource that fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of media art. www.eai.org