12-12-2022 | The Body: Time, Movement and Improvisation in the work of Carolee Schneemann and SERAFINE1369

Last week Jamila Johnson-Small AKA SERAFINE1369 gave a visiting lecture on her most recent work, a performance incorporating dance, sound and installation taking place in Berlin. This coincided with a visit to Barbican's Body Politics exhibition, the first survey in the UK of work by American artist Carolee Schneeman. The idea of using the body - specifically my body - in my work is not something I'm yet comfortable with, and the act of performance, even less so. However there was a great deal to be gained from both the artist's talk and gallery visit. An element shared by both sets of work that struck me as interesting was the use of rules to set clear boundaries for performance. SERAFINE1369 spoke about allotting periods of one or two minutes for each dancer to move and connect with the space, delineating portions of time again to certain areas of the space. This framework was very successful when viewing recordings of the work, that the artist shared, particularly in light of the fact there were two performers trying to convey the meaning of the work. This was echoed in much of the performance work displayed via use of archival material at Barbican's Body Politics exhibition, where handwritten documents outlined Schneemann's strategy as stage directions for her group shows, where movement was focussed in periods of three to five minutes, for example. The idea of using time as a method for making work, and setting a series of rules was one introduced to us in the first year of the BA, and its one I continue to find intriguing, I hope in the future to find use for it in my own work.

I do think there is also the emergence of an idea, or at the very least a connection I am begining to make in terms of how the body relates to the act of making, specifically crafting. Much of the practical work I make focusses on relatively strenuous or intricate requirement of my hands. The crafts I use - embroidery, weaving - link me to both my maternal grandmother whose livelihood was curtain making and seamstressing, as well as a more far flung or conceptual idea of the heritage I inherit from my father, and those making practices of bedouin women. The hands are intrinsic to this work, and I am hyper aware of the potential damage such a repetitive act can have on their mobility, given that my grandmother eventually developed athritis and could no longer continue to make the beautiful pieces she had dedicated much of her life to. Therefore, while the ideas of the body I've encountered in these two experiences seem at a superficial level unrelated to my own work, I see the potential they have on the future of my making.

1. Heavy handed, we crush the moment,, SERAFINE1369 image by Maurizia Martorana, 2019

2. Lateral Spay (19th and 20th November), Carolee Schneeman, 1963