Meat Joy embodies Schneemann’s concept of “kinetic theater,” in which performers engage in scored and improvised movements with a range of disparate materials. Eight performers— including Schneemann—covered in paint, paper, and paint brushes crawled and writhed together, playing with raw fish, meat, and poultry. According to the artist, by using the naked body as a material for art she “exposed and confronted a social range of current cultural taboos and repressive conventions.” To make this film, Schneemann combined footage from performances of Meat Joy in Paris and New York and set it to pop music, transforming a live work into a cinematic assemblage of twisting bodies with a soundtrack.
Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done, 2018
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Carolee Schneemann
American, 1939–2019 39 works onlineIn 1961, after completing her MFA in painting at the University of Illinois, Carolee Schneemann moved to New York. She gravitated toward an emerging Downtown performance scene, home to the experimental avant-garde artist collectives Living Theater and Judson Dance Theater, the latter of which she was a founding member.
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An event that could include a diverse range of actions, movements, gestures, and choreography. Performance is often preceded by, includes, or is later represented through various forms of video, photography, objects, written documentation, or oral and physical transmission.
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