Task 9- Philosophy, Theory and Politics

Carolee Schneemann Interior Scroll

Below is a print of two photographs documented from a performance piece at an exhibition called ‘Women Here and Now’ in New York, 1975. In front of a largely female audience Schneemann undressed and brushed her limbs with dark paint. As part of the performance aspect, she would take ‘action poses’ as though she was a life class model. She then read aloud a scroll she pulled from her vagina. This was argued by Robert C. Morgan to be ‘a feminist exploration her own body’. The scroll’s content is written on the two sides of the print in columns. The text itself is powerful, addressing how men traditionally are ordered and rational, whereas women tend to work from intuition. Amy Newman writes in the New York Times ‘the art world wasn’t shocked, it was confused and embarrassed’ in the 1960s about art that was purely of a sexual nature.

I admire Shneemann’s outrageous performance piece ‘Interior Scroll’. When looking inward, over my first year I hope to grasp and tackle poignant current issues. She writes that ‘in some sense [she] made a gift of [her] body to other women; giving our bodies back to ourselves’. With such an ambitious belief, conceptually and visually in her work, included in other pieces of her work also, it’s hard not to notice Schneemann as a hugely important feminist artist, offering guidance to women who may struggle with their own bodies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/03/arts/art-architecture-an-innovator-who-was-the-eros-of-her-own-art.html

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=interior+scroll+carolee+schneemann&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjoh4y469_XAhVN_aQKHYyDCMUQ_AUICygC&biw=1269&bih=640#imgrc=vPQ3vcqdu3T7oM:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/schneemann-interior-scroll-p13282