Carolee Schneemann, "Up to and Including Her Limits"

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)