Conversations in the Archives | The Carolee Schneemann Foundation

Rachel Churner and Rachel Helm of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation | Recorded July, 2024

For this episode, Hauser & Wirth Institute Executive Director Lisa Darms spoke with Rachel Churner and Rachel Helm of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation. Rachel and Rachel discuss the process of recording their oral history project – which was funded by a 2023 grant from Hauser & Wirth Institute – and share clips from their interview with Jane Wodening, the writer and artist who is perhaps best known for her collaborations with experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Their conversation turns to the iterative aspects of Schneemann’s famous performance Interior Scroll; the idea of legacy work as a form of caretaking; and the urgent need to document elders’ stories. They also talk about what it’s been like reading through Schneemann’s thousands of pages of diaries, and the complexities involved in deciding what should be public and what should remain private from artists’ papers.

LISTEN HERE 

Rachel Helm is the manager of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation and steward of Schneemann’s home in New Paltz, NY. Prior to her relocation to the Hudson Valley, Helm worked in public libraries in Missouri and Kentucky.

Rachel Churner is the director of the Carolee Schneemann Foundation. Churner 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 2018 Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and is the editor of multiple books, including, The New Television (no place press, 2024); Hans Haacke (MIT Press, 2015), and two volumes of writings by film historian Annette Michelson (MIT Press, 2017 and 2020). She currently teaches at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School.

The Carolee Schneemann Foundation is dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019). Schneemann was a pioneering artist whose work spanned a range of media, including painting, film, video, dance and performance, installations, and writing. Her art is known for its radical formal experimentation and critical investigations of subjectivity, the erotic and taboo, images of atrocity, and the social construction of the female body. Established by the artist in 2013, the Foundation advances the understanding of Schneemann’s work through scholarship, exhibitions, and publications. Over the next few years, the Foundation will establish a residency program at Schneemann’s home in upstate New York in order to support artists whose work shares Schneemann’s commitment to new methods of aesthetic experimentation. For more information on The Carolee Schneemann Foundation, please visit their website.

Mentioned during the conversation:

The Carolee Schneemann Foundation
Angry Women
Carolee Schneemann Oral History conversation with Jane Wodening
Jane Wodening’s website
Carolee Schneemann, Portrait of Jane Brakhage, 1958
Interior Scroll
Jane Wodening Papers at Yale
Carolee Schneemann Papers, 1959-1994, Getty Research Institute
Carolee Schneemann Papers, ca. 1954 – 2015, Stanford Libraries

View a transcript of the conversation here.