VESPER'S STAMPEDE TO MY HOLY MOUTH (1992)
DIRS: Victoria Vesna, C. Schneemann.
Victoria Vesna and Carolee Schneemann explore suppressed feminist issues of female subjugation, the unconscious, the paranormal and goddess religions. The result of two years of research and discussion, Vesna's portrait captures Schneemann’s most intimate issues in her studio and home. Central to the video is the latter’s recent essay, “Vesper's Stampede to My Holy Mouth,” where she weaves three themes: the erotic affections of her pet cat, female genital mutilation, and cat/ clitoral condemnation during witchcraft trials.
DVD, 15 min.
MEAT JOY (1964)
Converted from original film footage of three 1964 performances… in London, Paris and New York City,
Meat Joy is an erotic rite—excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic—shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent. Physical equivalences are enacted as a psychic imagistic stream, in which the layered elements mesh and gain intensity by the energy complement of the audience. The original performances became notorious and introduced a vision of the sacred erotic in a suppressive time.—C. Schneemann
DVD, 6 min
BODY COLLAGE (1967)
CINE: Gideon Bachmann
Body Collage is a visceral "movement-event" from 1967, in which Schneemann paints her body with wallpaper paste and molasses, and then runs, leaps, falls into and rolls through shreds of white printer's paper, creating a physicalized corporal collage. "My intention was not simply to collage my body (as an object), but to enact movement so that the collage image would be active, found, not predetermined or posed," writes Schneemann.
DVD, silent, 4 min.
This film was preserved through the Avant-Garde Masters program funded by The Film Foundation and administered by the NFPF.
INTERIOR SCROLL—THE CAVE (1995)
DIRS: C.Schneeman & Maria Beatty
In a vast underground cave, Schneemann and seven nude women perform the ritualized actions of “Interior Scroll”—reading text as each woman slowly extracts a scroll from her vagina. The scroll embodies the primacy of an extended visual line shaped as both concept and action. The extracted text merges critical theory with the body as a source of knowledge. Beatty’s camera moves from the naked group actions into close-ups of the unraveling text.
DVD, 12 min.
AMERICANA I CHING APPLE PIE (1972-2007);
The “Americana I Ching Apple Pie” recipe was first enacted in my Belsize, London kitchen in 1972. Unfortunately, the original footage disappeared with the man doing the documentation who may have been working for the CIA. The next presentation was [in] May ’77, as a cooking event for the Heresies Magazine performance and jumble sale benefit. With the exception of a dozen apples, flour, maple syrup and eggs which I brought, all the cooking “material,” utensils and props were discovered in the jumble. Objects which functionally approximated actual cooking utensils were used: nails, hammers, an arrow, a flower pot, ball bearings, rags, [a] watering can. The cook's apron was a ripped mini skirt with which I covered my hair. As I state in the performance, “traditionally you need an apron, but it doesn’t matter where you put it.”—C. Schneemann
DVD;17 min.
DEVOUR (2003-2004)
Devour is a single-channel (dual image) version of the artist's multi-channel video projection installation of the same name. Schneemann writes that this work features "a range of images edited to contrast evanescent, fragile elements with violent, concussive, speeding fragments. Looped…imagery combine political disasters, domestic intimacy, and ambiguous menace within enlarged details of gestures—both human and mechanical.” In this dense montage, the title comes to stand for both the voraciously synthetic, head-on rush of contemporary media, and the corresponding, near-addictive impulse of its consumers.
DVD, 8 min.
Newly reedited version! INFINITY KISSES--THE MOVIE (2008)
Incorporating and reworking extracts from Schneemann's earlier
Infinity Kisses (aka DUO), the film completes her exploration of human and feline sensual communication. The intimacy between cat and woman becomes a refraction of the viewer's attitude to self and nature, sexuality and control, the taboo and the sacred.
DVD, 10 min.
In person: Carolee Schneemann
On Sunday, April 20, Los Angeles Filmforum, and on Monday, April 21, REDCAT will screen additional work by Carolee Schneemann. See www.lafilmforum.org and www.redcat.org for more information.