polka dots to emphasize borders. the stop motion mode of presentation was suggested by my professors.
i want to make a lot of these that all connect together so its like i’m outlining as many objects/things/spaces that i come across as possible.
-ding ren, GW MFA ‘09
Meat Joy (1964)
Carolee Schneeman is most well known for her pioneering performances in the 60s and 70s. Today I attended her talk at Electronic Arts Intermix, an organization dedicated to video art. They have an enormous collection that you can watch if you set up an appointment.
Schneeman’s early themes investigate gender, sexuality, identity, and subjectivity. She screened and spoke of a few of her seminal films from the 60s. The first, Meat Joy, involved of a group of beautiful young men and women romping around in their underwear. They had to abide by several rules while interacting with each other, dead chickens, dead fish, house paint, and piles of paper-very messy and quite erotic. Her second piece, Snow, involved men and women crawling on the floor, covering each other in aluminum foil, white paint, and putting each other in poses. When asked where she got the money for all of the foil, she said that she called up Reynolds Wrap and told them that she needed it teach teach blind children (ha!), and they easily donated it to her. The third piece she presented was her famous, Body Collage, in which she painted her nude self with wall paper paste and rolled through shredded paper.
Body Collage (1967)
Schneeman’s most recent works are very different. The film of Americana I Ching Apple Pie was presented to us for the first time. She used humor to make an apple pie under the conscienceness of a post-modernist artist. I was laughing so hard as she poked fun at so many pretentious art references and directly made jokes towards Hannah Wilke and Joseph Beuys. Her most recent piece, Devour, had lots of imagery layered on top of each other with collaged parts of pop songs.
My reactions: Comparing her early works with today’s video/performance artists such as John Bock, Ryan Trecartin, and Mathew Barney, I can’t help but wonder: Why do they love incorporating visceral and tactile materials??? Schneeman was a hottie in the 60s. Even though she is a feminist she was totally exploiting her nude body, especially with the slow video shots that she edited to go up and down her body in Body Collage. There is a true performance purity in her early works. Now, 40 years later, she can no longer use her nude body- it’s just not the same. Her new works seem contrived, as if she is trying too hard. But maybe I just need more time to sit and think about them… Overall, I feel so lucky to have witnessed such a special event.
Devour (2004)
Kathryn Cornelius
Common Ground @ Curator’s Office
Cornelius uses performance, photography and video almost interchangeably, not committing herself to any one way of operating. She tends to favor low tech, readily available, consumer-friendly formats: The show’s titular video, for example, is available for sale as an mp4. Much of the work in Common Ground relates directly to her daily life-her intimate engagements with technology, place, and spirituality.” The artist continues to explore her interest in the frailties of communication and language — both visual and textual — and the difficulties we face in establishing connections with each other externally and the infinite within.
