FILM SCREENING | VULVIC SPACE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FILMS OF CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN

‘As a transgressive female artist, I have a heightened sense of implicit threat.’

‘By going public with my body I deprivatized it.’

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann, multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker, transformed the definition of art, particularly with respect to the discourse on the body, sexuality, and gender. The history of her work is characterized by research into archaic visual traditions, pleasure wrested from suppressive taboos, and the body of the artist in dynamic relationship with the social body.

PROGRAM

Fuses (1964-66, 29:51, color, silent, 16mm film on video)

Schneemann’s self-shot erotic film remains a controversial classic. “The notorious masterpiece… a silent celebration in colour of heterosexual love making. The film unifies erotic energies within a domestic environment through cutting, superimposition and layering of abstract impressions scratched into the celluloid itself… Fuses succeeds perhaps more than any other film in objectifying the sexual streamings of the body’s mind” — The Guardian, London

Plumb Line (1968-71, 14:58 min, color, sound, Super 8mm film on video)

The dissolution of a relationship unravels through visual and aural equivalences. Schneemann splits and recomposes actions of the lovers in a streaming montage of disruptive permutations: 8 mm is printed as 16 mm, moving images freeze, frames recur and dissolve until the film bursts into flames, consuming its own substance.

Carolee Schneemann in conversation with Christopher Zimmerman—post-screening discussion.

VENUE
ACFNY