There’s loving your cat, and then there’s loving your cat.
Carolee Schneemann
The Radical Art of Archiving Performance, as Practiced by Martha Wilson
The day after I went to go see the Martha Wilson: Downtown and Performing Franklin Furnace exhibitions in New York City, a friend brought me to a lecture-performance by Carolee Schneemann at a raw gallery space in Tribeca run by Hunter College.
Artist Known for Pulling Scroll Out of Her Vagina Talks Culture, Cats and Road Rage
Tuesday night, I ventured to St. Mark’s Bookshop to see pioneering feminist artist Carolee Schneemann read from her recent book of letters. Schneemann entered the crowded wearing her infamous devil mask.
Angry Art Letters on the Lower East Side
Ridykeulous, founded by artists Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner in 2005, describes itself as an effort to “subvert, sabotage, and overturn the language commonly used to define feminist and lesbian art,” primarily through exhibitions, performances, and zines. Attacking the marginalization of queer and feminist art as “alternative” cultures, they insist upon participating in mainstream dialogues about art and culture; in adopting the role of curators and organizing exhibitions, Steiner and Eisenman forcefully insert themselves and their collaborators into the spaces, both literally and figuratively, of the art establishment. Though not all of the artists in Readykeulous are female, nor do all identify as queer, they share an interest in disrupting the status quo.