Carolee Schneemann 15 Interviewed by Kenneth White Kenneth White: Can you do what I needed. (Now what this compendium of disasters, a little tell me more about the circum- had to do with the strange sex calls feature that they showed at con- stances of getting Snows (1967) that started happening at 2 in the temporary movies, Movietone or organized? Were there any difficul- morning…) something, and it was just one disas- ties with Experiments in Art and White: I don’t know anything ter after another. A boat blows up, Technology? about this. motorcycle racers blow up. It was Carolee Schneemann: Schneemann: Oh, well, very satisfying, one explosion after They didn’t work with me, no, this yeah… another, and then it cut to Santa wasn’t their project. Because Billy White: What happened? Claus appearing for the American Klüver was very fond of Jim [James Schneemann: Strange sex Legion. Tenney], and Jim was at Bell Labs, I calls started to happen at the loft. White: So did you make a had access to wonderful technicians White: Which loft? master reel for the performances who were excited and willing, but as Schneemann: On 29th explicitly? usual, I felt that I was sort of sneak- Street. I think it was still the old Schneemann: Oh yes, but ing in on the margins of Klüver’s loft. 122. But some man was calling there were several reels and they friendship for Jim—he really didn’t many nights and breathing strangely were all separate. care what I was doing. So it was a bit and I kept thinking, oh I hope it’s not White: Where are they now? of a token towards Jim. And since Paul, who had given me the theater. Schneemann: I have them I always feel that my work is under- But I have my doubts. Anyway, he somewhere. I had four projectors par, that it’s not up to whatever the was wonderful. I built a soft foam around the stage, so I had to have formal expectations are, I can do environment. The audience had to people loading them, starting the what I want and I don’t expect it to push through the foam to come in, projectors, stopping them, mak- be celebrated. to enter the theater. It was very dark ing a simultaneous projection of So there were no compli- when they came in and there were two or three and then letting them cations with the technicians. I told luminous lights on the snow-branch conclude. them what I saw and we tried to environment. So it was a huge White: This reminds me a decide—how could it happen and amount of work, huge to organize. I little of Andy Warhol’s Exploding what would it cost? I had a couple had some remarkably devoted, sort Plastic Inevitable (1966), his of wonderful assistants, one was a of obsessed workers who would try multi-sensory projection works techie who could help envision the anything, and they were wonderful. that he was doing with The Velvet circuitry, how the electronics would I was able to inspire that. We worked Underground. actually work, from the seats, and like crazy to build the installation, to Schneemann: And we also had microphones under the organize complex materials. Also, I VanDerBeek. He was a friend who stage, to magnify the thumps and had this same sort of mystical magic was doing simultaneous projections, the falls, and that was an import- in finding some of the projection film I think at the same time. VanDerBeek ant counterpoint which had to do that I wanted. filmed me doing the parachute with including chance contribu- I needed some early Nazi film dance for Oldenburg in Waves and tions, because this production was to give a layer under Vietnam, and Washes. What year was that? blessed with huge chance gifts. For I found those Bavarian skiers. They White: 1966. instance, at Christmas I had seen just had this great macho heroic Schneemann: I have my Gimbels department store covered in aspect of secure domination, skiing years jumbled up. It might have these snowy branches and I thought, through space, and that became one been after I did Snows. Who else? I need those, I need those! I knew of the energies, the skiing figures, Jud Yalkut, who shot everything I had to have a snow environment juxtaposed with the Vietnam con- Charlotte Moorman ever did. He and that it was going to be produced figurations which were collapsed, in lived in Ohio. He recently died. in January and that I wanted to fill despair, wounded, burning, drown- He was a great documentarian of the space with a snow-like collage. ing, running … Charlotte and other events of the And so a couple nights before we White: So this Bavarian ski time. But it was in the air. It was the had to install, I went with a crew film was projected as well as Viet ’60s and everything was happen- around the back of Gimbels, where Flakes (1965), onto the— ing everywhere all the time. But my their trash was, and there were all Schneemann: Bodies, interaction with the audience was my branches! Just waiting there! We onto the live performers. But in unique. I don’t think anybody had gathered all of them up, and as we sequences. They weren’t done at done that yet, or had heard of it. started walking back on 33rd Street, exactly the same time, that wouldn’t There were actions which led the it began to snow. I felt blessed and work, so I also had, I think with the performers across planks layered confirmed in all this. In the mean- Bavarian skiers, I also had Red News between the audience seats. These time the owner/director of the lit- simultaneously, that magical lit- walks were often undertaken prac- tle theater, Paul Libin, was fiercely tle film that I also found mystically tically blindfolded by wrapping the against the Vietnam War and so he by closing my eyes and putting my performers in a silver foil. Sections decided to give me the theater free hands up in front of a whole wall of the foil might fall into the audi- for an incredible amount of time, of 16mm films and I just pulled it ence, so they were on alert since the two or three weeks, to build in it, to and it was this perfectly remarkable walkers were in a shaky position. So of course the whole perfor- quotidian means, through the very We had a terrific Planned mance was structured by the uncer- modest manner of a mop. And then Parenthood center in New Paltz, tainty of the shifting cues, and that to Terminal Velocity, trying to rear- so all the women in the town had was important, to keep us respond- range the photographs, to give life access to their facilities, which ing in the moment, to each other and back to the victims depicted. were so good, and now they’re to the media. Schneemann: The work closed. Kingston is closed. The only White: Can you tell me more was domesticated by the impropri- Planned Parenthood that’s left is about making Viet Flakes? ety of the materials and the com- in Poughkeepsie, and of course it’s Schneemann: I was gath- plete lack of technological security. overwhelmed. Now you go there ering all the images because, as But that helps me in my work, that and you have to sit for hours. They you know, the Vietnam War was sense of desperation. How can I do don’t know where your records are. very suppressed. Jim and I found it? It hasn’t helped the appreciation The people you’ve worked with out about it really early, in 1961, of the work because it always looks have been fired. It’s a very pervasive in Illinois, through a poet from unfinished or crude. But it offers hardship. Vietnam, a young woman who told another psychological dimension. White: When these poli- us that we had troops in her country, It’s less of an artifice, less removed. ticians make such proclamations destroying villages, arresting peo- White: Where does the term about what women need, and what ple. We had never heard of this. Viet- "Flakes" come from in Viet Flakes? they should need, and what they what? So I started research early by Schneemann: From the deserve, and how their lives should gathering from international news falling snowflakes. Because the be run, it’s unacceptable. and alternative papers and vari- war was so endless and inexora- Schneemann: We’ve been ous things from the '60s, and then ble. We were bombing every day, fighting this since I was six years finally from a really important publi- everywhere. It just never ceased old and a hundred years before, cation where I found a great deal of and had no release. The militarists and they’re back, the autocratic my imagery, Report From Vietnam, were producing at the height of their patriarchs. They did not soften, which was a compilation of photos potentiality, and there was no moral they did not dissolve. They’re more by major photographers. And I consideration or implication whatso- crazy because they’re lunatics now. reshot those. I laid them all out, I ever in the popular consciousness of Because they’re so outside of the gathered them, some of them were this endless bombardment. Village transformations in the culture. only Xerox, and I had them all after village, mountain after moun- White: And still enough organized at the loft on the floor.