Trick Questions and Divine Interventions: Carolee Schneemann in Conversation with Melissa Ragona

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to present an evening with Carolee Schneemann, in conversation with critic and independent curator Melissa Ragona. The evening will feature a screening of Carolee Schneemann's more recent performative lectures, including Americana I Ching Apple Pi (2007) and Ask the Goddess (1991). Following the screening, Schneemann will discuss this pioneering body of work and present rare documentation of earlier performative lectures.

Thursday, January 11, 2018 7:00pm Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Fl. New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org $7 / $5 students / free for members

In 1968, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Schneemann presented her first activated essay, Naked Action Lecture, in which she used the body (both her own and audience members) to demonstrate the tension between gendered presentational positions, intellectual production and critical reception. This investigation continued throughout many other lecture-centered performances, including Schlaget Auf (1970), Cooking with Apes (1973), Interior Scroll (1975), Moon in a Tree (for Joseph Cornell) (1976), ABC We Print Anything — In the Cards (1976-79), HomeRunMuse (1977), Dirty Pictures (1985), The Delirious Arousal of Destruction or Is There a Feminist Erotic Iconography? (1991), Vulva's School (1995) and Mysteries of the Pussies (1998), just to name a few. This discussion will also examine Schneemann's influence on and context within a larger discussion during the sixties and seventies about conceptual and embodied approaches to the "lecture" as a work of art.

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Carolee Schneemann's pioneering work ranges across disciplines, encompassing painting, performance, film and video. Her early and prescient investigations into themes of gender and sexuality, identity and subjectivity, as well as the cultural biases of art history, have had significant influence on subsequent generations of artists. Schneemann received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, and holds Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and the Maine College of Art. Her work has been exhibited throughout the world, at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Film Theatre, London; Tate Liverpool, UK, and PPOW Gallery, New York. In 1997, a retrospective of Schneemann's work entitled Carolee Schneemann - Up To And Including Her Limits was held at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. A retrospective of over forty of her works was exhibited in 2010 at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz, and traveled to The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and Krannert Art Museum, Champagn, Illinois. Currently, the first comprehensive retrospective of her prolific six-decade career, entitled: Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting is on view at the Museum of Modern Art PS 1 (through March 11, 2018). In 2017, Schneemann was awarded the Venice Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Melissa Ragona is an Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Art History in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Her book, Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol’s Recording Aesthetics, is forthcoming from University of California Press and her essays and reviews have appeared in October, Frieze, Art Papers and in the edited collections Women’s Experimental Cinema (2007), Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound (2008), Andy Warhol Live (2008), Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image (2013), Paul Sharits (Retrospective Catalog, Fridericianum, Kassel) (2015), Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2016) and Sculpture and Film (Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture) (London: Ashgate Press, 2017). She has also published in monographs on the work of artists, Heike Mutter, Ulrich Genth, Christian Jankowski, Carolee Schneemann, Paul Sharits, and Antoine Catala. She has lectured on experimental film, sound, performance and installation at Yale University, Princeton University, Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Freie Universität Berlin, as well as The Academy of Fine Arts (KUVA) in Finland, and other venues both nationally and internationally. Her most recent essay on Schneemann, “Materiality, Lecture, and Game in the Work of Carolee Schneemann,” can be accessed on the Carnegie Museum of Art’s website here

About EAI
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution, and preservation of moving image art. A New York-based international resource for media art and artists, EAI holds a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media artworks, from groundbreaking early video by pioneering figures of the 1960s to new digital projects by today's emerging artists. EAI works closely with artists, museums, schools and other venues worldwide to preserve and provide access to this significant archive. EAI services also include viewing access, educational initiatives, extensive online resources, technical facilities, and public programs such as artists' talks, screenings, and multi-media performances. EAI's Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and features expansive materials on media art's histories and current practices: www.eai.org

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This program is made possible in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2017 Electronic Media and Film Presentation Funds Grant program, administered by the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.