|
Event
Carolee Schneemann: New videos of the Performing Artist
Sunday, January 13, 2013, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles Filmforum presents:
Carolee Schneemann: New videos of the Performing Artist
At the Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90028
Carolee Schneemann in person!
Filmforum is delighted to start 2013 with a visit from the influential and fantastic artist Carolee Schneemann. Schneemann, multidisciplinary artist, has transformed the definition of art, especially 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, the body of the artist in dynamic relationship to the social body. Schneemann has never ceased to cross mediums and boundaries to make work that resonates with raw poetic power. From her collaged war or diary films and provocative performances to her photos, paintings and installations, Schneemann's varied creations deconstruct our ingrained preconceptions and everyday assumptions. In words, images and actions, her art is deeply personal, sharply critical, intensely expressive, and always innovative. Tonight we are primarily looking at recent video works that draw from or document some of her performances.
Her classic film Fuses will be included in the screening Breaking the Plane, presented by Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA, on Thursday January 10 at 7:00 pm. For more information and tickets, see www.moca.org
Currently in Los Angeles, her early painting/constructions are exhibited in a group show at THE BOX, "Painting" (how painting became performance). http://www.theboxla.com/
Screening:
Plumb Line (1968-71, color, sound, Super 8mm film on video, 14:58)
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 16mm, moving images freeze, frames recur and dissolve until the film bursts into flames, consuming its own substance. Sound: Carolee Schneemann
Ask the Goddess (1991, color, sound, 7 min.)
Unedited document of performative lecture, videotaped by Tim Howe at Owen Sound, Ontario Canada.
Ask the Goddess is a provocative performance in which Schneemann interacts with the audience by responding to sexual and psychic dilemmas read from cards they have submitted.
A continuous relay of randomly projected slides comprises an iconography of Goddess symbols, taboo and sacred, as Schneemann reacts spontaneously to the questions. She channels cogent answers triggered by the unpredictable images and finds herself physically activated, turning into a howling wolf or crawling across the projection area, meowing like a cat.
Snows (1967-2011, color and b&w, silent, 16 mm film on video, 20:30 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
This is a newly restored version of documentation of the 1967 group performance "Snows¨
"... [Snows] was build out of my anger, outrage, fury and sorrow for the Vietnamese. The performance contained five films whose related content triggered juxtaposition of a winter environment and Vietnam atrocity images."
Pinea Silva (2011, color, sound, 10 min.)
Los Angeles premiere!
Hidden and suppressed origins of the iconic Christmas tree are here analyzed as
Schneemann reconstructs the archaic gender attributes of the winter tree. A normative
hetero Christmas card is juxtaposed with a gay Santa squeezing down a chimney, a
Palestinian Santa Claus presenting one skinny tree in Jerusalem, the ancient nordic
Goddess affiliation with the tree as vulvic fecundity, and of course including a domestic
Cat dressed as Santa Claus. Pinea Silva is a lecture which deconventionalizes all aspects of
The Christian Christmas tree its archaic and sacred aspects invite appreciations by all.
Americana I-Ching Apple Pie (2007, 16:37 min, color, sound, 16:37)
"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 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 that 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.'" - CS
Devour (2003-04, color, sound, 8:40)
Devour is a single-channel 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 political disasters, domestic intimacy, and ambiguous menace." 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.
More on Carolee Schneemann:
Carolee Schneemann's pioneering work ranges across disciplines, encompassing painting, performance, film and video. Her early and prescient investigations into themes of gender and sexuality, identity and subjectivity, as well as the cultural biases of art history, laid the groundwork for much work of the 1980s and '90s. Her bold challenges to taboo and tradition can be seen as inspiring and influencing artists as varied as Paul McCarthy, Valie Export, the Guerrilla Girls, Tracy Emin and Karen Finley.
While she is often described as a performance artist, Schneemann first studied painting, and that training informed the course of all her subsequent work. It can be seen in her continuing identification as a painter and a formalist, in her attention to art-historical figures such as Cézanne, and in the hand-coloring and mark-making to which she subjected the surface of some of her films. However, the effect of her early experience with painting was also reactive and negative; she recognized, as a woman in the early 1960s working in a male-dominated medium, that "the brush belonged to abstract expressionist male endeavor. The brush was phallic." This realization coincided with an explosion of new artistic forms, and while Schneemann would never give up painting, she turned her attention to the downtown New York avant-garde's locus of film, dance, theater, and performance. more at eai.org
The Millennium Film Journal Number 54 Fall 2011 was devoted to the film works of Schneemann, with special essays by Bruce Elder, David James, Sarah Paulson, and Kenneth White. It includes unpublished notes and sketches for Kitch's Last Meal.
Paule Anglim Gallery in San Francisco has just presented a solo exhibit of her video and photography works;
The Museum of Modern Art in NYC recently featured her installation Up To And Including Her Limits in the exhibit "On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century". Her multidisciplinary work has been shown at innumerable venues around the world. A retrospective including film, video installations, kinetic sculptures has recently traveled from the Dorsky Museum of Art, NY to the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle to the Krannert Museum, Champaign-Urbana (February April 2012). Her letters are the subject of Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle, edited by Kristine Stiles (Duke University Press, 2010). Additional publications include Imaging Her Erotics Essays, Interviews, Projects (MIT Press 2003, 2004) and More Than Meat Joy: Complete Performance Work and Selected Writing (McPherson & Co. 1979, 1997). More at http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/
---------------
This program is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, and the Metabolic Studio.
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization screening experimental and avant-garde film and video art, documentaries, and experimental animation. 2012 is our 37th year
Memberships available, $70 single, $105 dual, or $50 single student
Contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com. www.lafilmforum.org
Become a fan on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter!
|
|
 |
LocationSpielberg Theater at the Egyptian (View)
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
|
Contact
|
