In 1970, composer Pauline Oliveros read Valerie Solanas’s now infamous SCUM Manifesto, (1967). Inspired by the text, Oliveros composed a score, To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation, which tasked performers to make autonomous choices about pitch, rhythm, and tone, and to simultaneously respond to the dynamics of the group. Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz’s eponymous work, from 2013, consists of a 16mm film installation portraying a performance of Oliveros’s score. Shot in a single continuous take, the camera asserts itself as an additional performer of sorts, zooming and roving unconventionally to offer up new angles on filmic, musical, and performative forms, and their possible interrelation. Boudry and Lorenz will present their film, followed by an onstage discussion with Pauline Oliveros, moderated by Gregg Bordowitz.
Oliveros's sound and video installation Deep Listening Room is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, where she will perform with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). The 2014 Whitney Biennial is co-curated by Stuart Comer, MoMA's Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art.