In conjunction with the MoMA PS1 retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting, this screening event and discussion in celebration of the artist’s work features special guests Melissa Ragona, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Critical Studies, School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, on the role of sound in Schneemann's work; Jenny Jaskey, Director, The Artist’s Institute, on the experimental film Plumb Line (1968–72); artist Amy Sillman, on Schneemann as painter; and Branden W. Joseph, Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Columbia University, on the Lebanon Series (1981–99). A conversation and Q&A with Schneemann follows.
Over six decades, Schneemann’s fearless investigation of “lived experience,” and her confrontation of the female body’s position in visual culture and art history, have paved the way for multiple generations of artists to redefine the power lines of the art world and society as a whole. As a central protagonist of New York’s experimental avant-garde in the early 1960s, Schneemann began translating painting and collage into the choreography of living bodies and the dissolve of flickering film images. Throughout her career, Schneemann has used elements from every corner of her universe as tactile, artistic materials—objects from her daily life, her own body, or news images of violence that she felt compelled to interrogate. This circulation between the material and the ephemeral has allowed Schneemann to create the images and responses missing from her cultural landscape, and has contributed to the raw emotional power of her work.