Sunday, November 11, 2012

Carolee Schneemann: Homework #3


         Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975
The role of the artist’s body in their performances is to portray the sexuality she felt in general and from her divorce. Schneemann wanted to introduce that creativity and imaginative energy comes from her being a female artist. As a painter she believes that the body can be used as a canvas and therefore uses hers to portray her thoughts and creativity. With this performance piece in particular, Schneemann was focusing it towards women, where against the traditional ways of the ‘male’ notions of order. The subjects this performance explore are feministic and creativity with the female, human body. She uses a film scroll written with other bodily functions on it with a reading describing how Schneemann feels about the vagina. “I thought of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the source of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation.” Is the first sentence from the passage of Interior Scroll.
 Overall, this performance piece is a commentary on the woman’s body and how she uses it as a canvas to portray her imaginative mind on. She uses the space that she’s in by standing on a table and performing it at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. She then proceeds to stand with her legs wide apart and her back hunched over, painted in mud, pulling the scroll out of her vagina. The scenery, I am guessing is dark and dirty like. This particular performance was documented with black and white photographs, unlike some of her other pieces of artwork that were films. There is currently no footage of Interior Scroll online, just photos and documentation of her work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmgERKy210o

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