Carolee: I'm Carolee Schneemann, and
I'm here at MOMA for an interview while I'm installing a
large diptych drawing, Up To and Including Her Limits was
originally inpsired by a neighbor who came to prune my apple tree. I had been working with 3/4-inch
manila rope in creating an
aerial suspended kinetic work and then the tree trimmer went
away to have lunch and I just took off my clothes and crawled into the
harness to see what it felt like. The work demands a release, a
submission to the sense of float that I have being suspended. And then the physical extensivity
of the arm with the crayons
that are going to keep, as I move, hitting the adjacent walls
that are situated so that they're within the reach of the hand with the
crayon as well as the floor. It's a work that developed over
the course of six or seven years. I kept adapting the rope and the
harness and the time duration to various spaces that I would live
in and sleep in and sometimes even have my cat living with me in the museum. It's usually four to six monitors and
the various action sequences come from seven or eight different performances. Part of my fondness for Up To and
Including Her Limits is that it relates to the fact that I'm a painter. I have never described myself
as a performance artist. When I started extending materials
into realtime and literal space it was coming out of the happenings. I was influenced by Claes Oldenburg,
by Jim Dine by Robert Whitman and it had nothing to do
with self confession or self
exposure or personal narrative. It really had to do with painterly
sense of environment as a collage arena. Up To and Including Her Limits really
is a discussion with Jackson Pollock to vitalize the whole body as stroke
and gesture in this dimensional space. (acoustic guitar music)