Carolee Schneemann's Cats (2023)

Cats Like Plain Crisps
Blindside Melbourne Australia
8 Nov–2 Dec 2023

The first major retrospective of Carolee Schneemann since her death in 2019 has opened at the Barbican in London. Although Schneemann is best known for her groundbreaking performances and critical feminist voice, many of her works in the retrospective are linked by the recurring presence of her cats—her companions and co-conspirators throughout her long career. ‘The cat,’ she even declared in 1974, ‘is my medium.’ Carolee Schneemann’s Cats is an exhibition responding to this legendary artist’s feline muses.

Our multidisciplinary collective, Cats Like Plain Crisps, is newly convened and includes members from eight countries. Borrowed from an old piece of graffiti, the group’s name encapsulates some of our concerns: public art, fieldwork, objets trouvés, and text/writing. It also speaks to a posthuman and ecofeminist orientation as well as a playful, inclusive creative approach. Carolee Schneemann’s Cats is our first collaboration and—as we find Schneemann doing in her own work—explores the potential of the feral lurking within the domestic. Through our own multimedia works, realised individually and collaboratively, we will tap into Schneeman’s chaotic yet purposeful investigation into what is familiar and homely but turns out to be full of the unruly and unexpected.

Catherine Clover Cat got my Tongue (2023)
Installation – vinyl lettering, postcards
Cat got my Tongue is inspired by Carolee’s biographical Life Books in which she documents her own life as well as the lives of her cats. The focus of my work is Blackberry, my parents’ cat. My parents are both recently deceased, and this project documents Blackberry’s last weeks in their flat leading up to her new life living with my sister.

The work takes the form of a very short dictionary of cat words, vocalisations made by Blackberry as she stares out of the window watching wildlife in the long garden. It’s winter in west London and we are spending time together at the window. As she watches she vocalises. She watches, listens, voices, watches, listens, voices. It is likely that some of her sounds are connected to hunting behaviour yet, as far as I know, she is not a cat that actively hunts when she is outdoors in the garden. One of the collective’s broader concerns is the ecological. In our discussions about Carolee’s significant artistic legacy and how her cats have been a key part of the evolution of her artworks, the idea of the feral within the domestic has emerged as a key discussion point.

There are eight definitions in the short dictionary, six words and two silences. The definitions are descriptive, speculative, subjective, full of unknowns. The words are installed on the eight window panes of Blindside’s Gallery 1 and also printed on black and white postcards. The window has a wide vista over the southern part of Naarm-Melbourne from the gallery’s location on the seventh floor of the Nicholas Building. I have little doubt that Blackberry would appreciate spending hours at this window.