A short clip of the performance of ‘Noise Bodies’. Based on Schneemann’s instructions, I recorded myself relaying the instructions which played through the PA at OTO.
Myself and the performers wore a head lamp each and created our own wearable objects – a mix of discarded objects and personal items. We ‘played’ the objects through interactions, movement, using cable wire as ‘wands’ as instructed by Carolee.
The Enemy Is Human Misery
A co-curated event with Death Knell featuring a diverse group of poets and musicians.
Meet the Speakers
Rachel Churner is the director of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation. She is also an art critic and editor, whose writings have appeared in Artforum and October magazine, among other publications. She was a recipient of The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in 2018 and was the editor of Hans Haacke (MIT Press, 2015), two volumes of writings by film historian Annette Michelson (MIT Press, 2017 and 2020), and Yvonne Rainer: Revisions (no place press, 2020), as well as books and exhibition catalogues on Jaime Davidovich, James Ensor, and Charlotte Posenenske. She owned and operated Churner and Churner, a contemporary art gallery in New York, from 2011–2014. Churner holds degrees in Art History from Stanford University and Columbia University and currently teaches in the Department of Visual Studies at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School.
Cathy Wade is an artist and writer who investigates how practice can be created and distributed in collaborative partnerships and through the creation of commons. Their work seeks to understand the experience of contemporary conditions through exchange with others. They are course leader for MA in Arts Education Practices at BCU; and are currently curating new work with artist Hannah Sawtell at Vivid Projects alongside facilitating Black Hole Club, Vivid Projects’ artist development programme.
Lotte Johnson is a curator at Barbican Art Gallery, London, where she is curating the forthcoming retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics, opening in September 2022. Her work as a curator, writer and art historian focuses on interdisciplinary artistic expressions, feminist practices and transcultural dialogues, with a particular interest in performance. At the Barbican, she has curated solo artist commissions by Toyin Ojih Odutola (2020), Jamila Johnson-Small (2019), Yto Barrada (2018) and Bedwyr Williams (2016) and contributed to a number of major exhibitions, including Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (2019), Basquiat: Boom for Real (2017) and The World of Charles and Ray Eames (2015), editing and authoring publications for many of these projects. She previously worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, contributing to exhibitions focused on Jean Dubuffet, Ellen Gallagher, Paul Gauguin, Jasper Johns and Dieter Roth.
As part of the upcoming performances of ‘Noise Bodies’ and ‘Saxony’, myself and musicians Fred Fuller, Mark Abbott and Death Knell have explored concepts and techniques for these pieces. ‘Saxony’ will be performed on piano, bass guitar, electric guitar and electronics.
Glaswegian musician, Fergus Lawrie of cult band Urusei Yatsura and London-based musician, Dee Sada come together as Paper Birch to share their mutual feelings of despair, fragility and hope in this collection of nine songs. The album, MORNINGHAIRWATER was written under lockdown between May and June 2020 as a result of the fervent correspondence of lyrics, ideas and sounds.
The album will be released in August on TAKUROKU, the new digital label from underground arts venue, Cafe OTO.
There will be a preview of 3 tracks and live interview with the band on Saturday July 11th on the Hello Goodbye show on Resonance FM.
Track listing:
Summer Daze
Love For The Things Yr Not
Elegy (As We Mourn)
Curse Us
I Don’t Know You
Hide
Blue Heartbreak
Cemetery Moon
Fallen
Artist: Paper Birch
Title: MORNINGHAIRWATER
Label: TAKUROKU
Release Date: August 2020 (digital)
It’s amazing how many connections I have made since R.D. Laing 50. I feel so inspired and driven to do more events and work with more amazing people.
I connected with Carolee Schneemann via the filmmaker Peter Davis, both of whom I have just met in the last week. I am inspired to do an event based on the Dialectics of Liberation conference which was organised by Dr Joseph Berke.
As a seminal feminist artist, Carolee does not need much of an introduction. I recently read her essay about her experience at the Dialectics of Liberation conference in her book, More Than Meat Joy. She performed a happening at the end of the two week conference and there was also the UK premier of her film, Fuses.
Carolee was one of the few female voices at the conference, the other being IKON’s editor, Susan Sherman. I am intrigued by the lack of female visibility at the Dialectics of Liberation. It was an occasion where race was given a platform (with the inclusion of Stokely Carmichael) however women remained on the fringes. My research will hopefully uncover more…
Dee Sada 