Carolee Schneemann

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN

ABC—We Print Anything—In The Cards, 1976, 314 color-coded notecards transferred to 35mm slides, dimensions variable.

Color Palette Environment, 2015. Site-specific installation.

JAMES TENNEY

Postal Pieces, 1965-71, eleven postcards, dimensions variable, reprinted by Smith Publications.

MAI-THU PERRET

Society is a Hole, 2009, silkscreen, 84.1 x 59.4 cm, courtesy the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.

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The first of the 156 notecards that make up Schneemann’s ABC—We Print Anything—In The Cards (1976–77), cinches art and life in a circuit:

"Gerry said: The point is to get the basic spirit of the life out into the work. The point of the work is to renew the basic spirit of the life."

Born out of the emotional chaos of two tangled relationships, the artwork’s attention to how we communicate, disrupt, and adapt to one another now renews the spirit of what happens around it: a music concert written as correspondence by composer James Tenney, a lecture on the difficulty of interpreting Schneemann’s art by Branden W. Joseph, an intercollegiate symposium, a night of stand-up comedy, and a print from a fictional feminist secession by Mai-Thu Perret.