Anthony McCall, thirteen photographs of Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975. Stockholm: Moderna Museet. © Carolee Schneemann. Photo: Estate of Carolee Schneemann/Galerie Lelong & Co./Hales Gallery/PPOW Gallery.
Challenging the way that women’s Art was systematically reduced and dismissed by the patriarchal structures in the Art world, Carolee Shneeman performed her piece Interior Scroll in 1975 and again in1977. Schneemann, a painter endured her work being labelled ‘messy’ and ‘painterly,’ a stark contrast to the way work from her male contemporaries was received. Her work demands the reconsideration of they way women and their work are represented as artists and as art. While Schneemann was awarded the 2017 Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for her lifetime achievements and contribution to Art, her work was heavily criticised in the decades prior.
Scroll 2, 1977
I met a happy man
a structuralist filmmaker—
but don’t call me that
it’s something else I do—
he said we are fond of you
you are charming
but don’t ask us
to look at your films
we cannot
there are certain films
we cannot look at
the personal clutter
the persistence of feelings
the hand-touch sensibility
the diaristic indulgence
the painterly mess
the dense gestalt
the primitive techniques
(I don’t take the advice
of men who only talk to
themselves)
PAY ATTENTION TO CRITICAL
AND PRACTICAL FILM LANGUAGE
IT EXISTS FOR AND IN ONLY
ONE GENDER
even if you are older than I
you are a monster I spawned
you have slithered out
of the excesses and vitality
of the sixties . . .
he said you can do as I do
take one clear process
follow its strictest
implications intellectually
establish a system of
permutations establish
their visual set . . .
I said my film is concerned
with DIET AND DIGESTION
very well he said then
why the train?
the train is DEATH as there
is die in diet and di in
digestion
then you are back to metaphors
and meanings
my work has no meaning beyond
the logic of its systems
I have done away with
emotion intuition inspiration—
those aggrandized habits which
set artists apart from
ordinary people—those
unclear tendencies which
are inflicted upon viewers . . .
it’s true I said when I watch
your films my mind wanders
freely . . .
during the half hour of
pulsing dots I compose letters
dream of my lover
write a grocery list
rummage in the trunk
for a missing sweater
plan the drainage pipes for
the root cellar . . .
it is pleasant not to be
manipulated
he protested
you are unable to appreciate
the system the grid
the numerical rational
procedures—
the Pythagorean cues—
I saw my failings were worthy
of dismissal I’d be buried
alive my works lost . . .
he said we can be friends
equally though we are not artists
equally I said we cannot
be friends equally and we
cannot be artists equally
he told me he had lived with
a “sculptress” I asked does
that make me a “film-makeress”?
“Oh no,” he said. “We think of you
as a dancer.”
(text from Kitch’s Last Meal, 1973-1978)
Source: https://www.schneemannfoundation.org/writing/interior-scroll, accessed 7/6/2024