Interior Scroll

Carolee Schneemann first performed “Interior Scroll” in East Hampton, New York, in August 1975. She entered the performance space wrapped in a white sheet and carrying a bucket of paint and brushes. After undressing, she ritualistically painted her body and read from her book Cezanne, She Was A Great Painter. Schneemann then slowly extracted a scroll from her vagina and read the text below, an excerpt from her Super 8 film “Kitch’s Last Meal.” The thirteen sequential photographs in this portfolio record her historic performance. “Interior Scroll” was performed a second and last time at the Telluride Film Festival, Colorado, in 1977.“I thought of the vagina in many ways—physically, conceptually: as a sculptural form, and architectural referent, the source of sacred knowledge; ecstasy, birth passage, transformation. I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual powers. This source of ‘interior knowledge’ would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship.” —Carolee Schneemann, 1975Following is the text that Schneemann read from the scroll during her performance:I met a happy mana structuralist filmmaker—but don’t call me thatit’s something else I do—he said we are fond of youyou are charmingbut don’t ask usto look at your filmswe cannotthere are certain filmswe cannot look atthe personal clutterthe persistence of feelingsthe hand-touch sensibilitythe diaristic indulgencethe painterly messthe dense gestaltthe primitive techniques(I don’t take the adviceof men who only talk tothemselves)PAY ATTENTION TO CRITICALAND PRACTICAL FILM LANGUAGEIT EXISTS FOR AND IN ONLYONE GENDEReven if you are older than meyou are a monster I spawnedyou have slithered outof the excesses and vitalityof the sixties……..he said you can do as I dotake one clear processfollow its strictestimplications intellectuallyestablish a system ofpermutations establishtheir visual set……..I said my film is concernedwith DIET AND DIGESTIONvery well he said thenwhy the train?the train is DEATH as thereis die in diet and di indigestionthen you are back to metaphorsand meaningsmy work has no meaning beyondthe logic of its systemsI have done away withemotion intuition inspiration—those aggrandized habits whichset artists apart fromordinary people—thoseunclear tendencies whichare inflicted upon viewers……..it’s true I said when I watchyour films my mind wandersfreely……………..during the half hour ofpulsing dots I compose lettersdream of my loverwrite a grocery listrummage in the trunkfor a missing sweaterplan the drainage pipes forthe root cellar………..it is pleasant not to bemanipulatedhe protestedyou are unable to appreciatethe system the gridthe numerical rationalproceduresthe Pythagorean cues—I saw my failings were worthyof dismissal I’d be buriedalive my works lost………he said we can be friendsequally tho we are not artistsequally I said we cannotbe friends equally and wecannot be artists equallyhe told me he had lived witha “sculptress” I asked doesthat make me a “film-makeress”?“Oh no,” he said. “We think of youas a dancer.”