CAROLEE SCHNEEMAN, INTERIOR SCROLL, 1975/77

1975/77, performance, Women Here and Now, East Hampton, NY, August 29, 1975.
Telluride Film Festival, Telluride, CO, September 4, 1977

“The message I read for Interior Scroll is from the feminist texts in Kitch's Last Meal. The image occurred as a drawing; this image seemed to have to do with the power and possession of naming-the movement from interior thought to external signification, and the reference to an uncoiling serpent, to actual information (like ticker tape, rainbow, Torah in the Ark, chalice, choir loft, plumb line, bell tower, the umbilicus, and tongue). - Schneeman Foundation

In front of an audience comprising mainly women artists, Schneemann approached a long table under two dimmed spotlights dressed and carrying two sheets. She undressed, wrapped herself in a sheet and climbed on the table. After telling the audience she would read from her book, Cezanne, She Was A Great Painter (published 1976), she dropped the sheet, retaining an apron, and applied strokes of dark paint on her face and body. Holding the book in one hand, she then read from it while adopting a series of ‘life model “action poses”’ (Schneemann in More Than Meat Joy, p.235). She then removed the apron and slowly drew a narrow scroll of paper from her vagina, reading aloud from it. - Tate

Note: The text for each of the performances was different.