Interviewed by Lynn Hershman
October 24, 2006
San Francisco, CA
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Yvonne Rainer: (scratching forehead,
siren in background) Well, um, although I knew a lot of artists, um,
I uh…uh…yeah, I wanted to be an actress. Yeah, I wanted to be an
actress. Uh, I wanted, in San Francisco, I joined this little theater
group and uh, uh, I didn't encounter any resistance at that point.
I was 20, 19 or 20. Uh, I came to New York in 1956 and uh jumped into
uh acting school. Herbert (sirens) Berghof. Studied with Lee Grant.
Uh…
Uh, in '56, Herbert Berghof school
in uh of acting in, in New York. Studied with Lee Grant. In effect,
they told me I was no good. And while taking acting classes I just,
a friend of mine uh introduced me to uh modern dance classes with Edith
Stefan (sp?). And that immediately took, and it was socially, it was
an, socially acceptable uh, uh, pursuit, for women. I mean, traditionally,
the great matriarchs of modern dance, Doris Humphrey (sp?), Graham,
et cetera. Uh so I didn't encounter any resistance to speak of-other
than my own what seemed to be lack of talent as a dancer; I was never
a natural dancer.
Um, but uh, the uh, I was uh, uh, very familiar with the abstract expressionist painting world, and I heard all kinds of what later appeared, in retrospect I recognized as flagrant sexism. You know, like uh, "She paints like a man" And uh…So uh if you were a painter, if you were not an aspiring actor or dancer, uh, I can imagine uh it was quite a bit of resistance, and uh pressure.
Lynn Hershman: [Question inaudible]YR: Um, I, uh, friends of mine were from New York, said I should go, uh, and I got involved with Al Held, the uh abstract expressionist painter, he was from New York and he wanted to go back, so I followed in his footsteps.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Ah, the Cedar Bar. The Cedar
Street Tavern, I think it was properly called. Well, it was a place
where you, artists gathered practically every night practically. Uh
Al and I would go down there (scratches head) uh at least once a week.
Met friends, uh, uh, it's interesting to compare uh it to "Scenes,"
New York scenes now. I mean, there was no music. Um, there were uh paintings
of um, fox hunting, duck hunting. It was painted, the walls were painted
this bilious green, and for fifty cents, you could stay all night, drink
a glass of wine, beer.
Um, very convivial place, and it's really where I learned about the art world, um.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Uh, there were quite a few women at the Cedar Bar, yes. Mostly men, but uh, um, our immediate friends were Doris Casella (sp?) an aspiring pianist, composer, who interestingly enough had taken one of John Cage's famous courses at the New School? In the mid-fifties. The only woman in her class. Uh, Bernice Devorsan (sp?) a painter. Uh, uh, uh, Shirley Kaplan (Caplan?), a painter, who aren't especially well known now, but uh. Uh, yeah, I guess it was mostly mean, yeah.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Uh, well I got most of my impressions from about painters from Al Held, and as I said, this expression, "She, she paints like a man," was a familiar uh, line. An ambitious woman, who um, uh, was talented and did good work, was in competition with men, automatically. So uh, you know that kind of remark went in one ear and out the other. I was young, there was no feminist movement to uh, uh, as an antidote to such attitudes, and uh, but they, it's interesting that they stuck in my mind, through the years. And of course much later became cultural history, you know. Yeah.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Uh, well, I was a person of
many contradictions. Uh, in terms of my ambitions. Um, I wanted to be
a "good girl." I was uh, uh, somewhat compliant uh, with a, rather
overbearing mate. And um I had to disavow-because my personal history-disavow
anything that appeared to be ambition. So when I was told at a party-this
was in the, oh, mid-60s-I was told by Richard Serra that I had an
ambition "close to the suicidal," or something like that. I mean,
it was an outrageous comment. Yeah, I felt it was an offensive remark.
And uh, partly because, I mean, I was especially offended because my
image of myself was of being somewhat docile, and certainly not ambitious.
But my work spoke otherwise. By that point.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Yeah, feminist consciousness
in the 'sixties. It was kind of subliminal, and I guess the work of
Carolee Schneemann um, like in the Jud, among the Judson people there
were what I would call "proto-feminist" work. Even if it was somewhat
unconscious, um, um, Carolee was I think the most, her work was the
most overtly feminist. It was about the body, it was uh, um, it was
kind of an antecedent to what would come later.
But there, there was uh, there were hints
of this like in a solo of Lucinda Childs where she used uh object uh
from the kitchen. Um, as decorative elements on her, her, in a dance
on her head. A lettuce strainer, uh, curlers, sponges. Uh, and David
Gordon, uh, albeit somewhat unconsciously, made a dance called um, uh,
"Mannequin Dance," in a bloody lab coat, he did some simple movement.
And uh sang two Broadway songs-one was "Get Married, Shirley, Get
Married," and the other was "Second-hand Rose."
So uh these laments and uh proscriptions against women's independence were very much uh, uh, foregrounded, and in relation to this bloody lab coat. I mean, it was a powerful piece, and we, I wouldn't have been able to articulate this at the time, but in retrospect it uh, it certainly, I think it certainly had feminist overtones.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Um, by the 'sixty-seven,
'sixty-eight, I was going on demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
And by 1970 I was involved with the Art Workers Coalition, that was
protesting the invasion of Cambodia. And uh there were a lot of demonstrations
inside and outside of museums, to try and get them to close to protest
the word. And the inner, the core of Herman Nitsch and uh (rubs forehead,
thinking) John uh…names are going to be difficult for me. Anyway,
they did things like going to a board meeting luncheon at the Met and
let loose a bottle of cockroaches over the table, and they did some
outrageous things.
And also um, I uh, danced uh, at the
opening of the uh…the um, uh, People's Flag Show in Judson Church
in 1970 which was mounted to protest the arrest of people who were allegedly
desecrating the flag. Flag burning, or using the flag in their artwork.
And so this show consisted of every conceivable kind of work. It was
open to everybody. Uh, who used the American flag. Jasper Johns, Kate
Millett, a lot of different people. Hundred people. And so I performed
what was to become my signature dance, Trio A. We took off our clothes
and tied uh five-foot American flags around our necks and performed
it, the dance.
Well it, the reaction was uh…um, you know, as people who were very sympathetic with the cause, with the protest, who were there. Um, I don't remember how it was covered in the papers. Uh, the particular case that uh, was the uh (scratches chin) instigation of this show, the sculp- the gallery owner uh Steven Radich, it was a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court and it was dropped. Never you know, they didn't even, they threw it out.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: My history with uh, uh, calling myself a, a feminist, is curious, because for the first five years of the resurgence of the feminist movement, I couldn't bring myself to call myself a feminist, because I thought feminists were activists. Uh, or in the mode of Eleanor Roosevelt or uh, um, my uh political activism was certainly anti-war, but my work didn't reflect a feminist-I didn't think my work was specifically politically feminist. And then I was teaching at Cal Arts, in 1975, and uh, I remember having lunch with Miriam Shapiro. And I said, Well, and I said to her, "Well, I, I can't, I'm not entitled to call myself a feminist." And I, unbeknownst to me, myself, I had the reputation of not being a feminist. I certainly was not anti-feminist. And she said very simply, "Well, your work deals with your experience as a woman. So you're a feminist." And after that I called myself a feminist.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: I was only there for one semester-a quarter even, semester, they're… Um, so I didn't really get involved with, yeah. Uh, I, I did uh, uh, I taught a performance class for studio artists. And um…I was, I was never at, I think the Women's uh, House, Woman's Building was still active in '75. I don't remember going there. Yeah. Miriam was my only connection, because she taught at Cal Arts.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: (scratching forehead) No. Oh, yes, yes. One became an experimental filmmaker. Um, um, what's her name? It'll come to me, pop in.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Ah. My transition into film
is a long story. It took place over three years. Uh, in the late '60s
I made short films. Very experimental, minimal, that were incorporated
into dance performances. Um, and uh, I was using, I was thinking about
narrative more and more and uh, um, and I was thinking about uh how
my dancing could not encompass uh, the emotional subject matter. I didn't
make expressionist or dramatic or pantomimic kind of movement. So I
began, and then I made some multi-media um, um, performances incorporated
bits of film and bits of text, and the texts were more and more about
sexual conflicts, about transposing my own experiences uh, uh, uh, uh,
into uh, uh, performance and art.
And meanwhile I was reading uh, Sisterhood is Powerful, The Dialectics of Sex-I was very influenced by the women's movement-by that point this would have been '70, '71. Um, so my first film uh, it was like the women's movement gave me permission to start moving into this area, of my experiences as a woman. All of my. (someone moves in front of camera) uh, all the contradictions and uh, and uh, uh, uh, um, ….pressures and whatever. Um, so uh, and it was, and I, and also moving into film, uh, it Ho- Hollywood features, soap opera, and uh, experimental film that had preceded me in the work of Maya Deren, Hollis Frampton, Warhol-these are all factors that I was playing off of when I made my first feature, "Lives of Performers," and that came out in 1972.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: I think a feminist consciousness was much more developed and uh, uh, um, uh, elaborate, elaborated on the west coast, largely through Miriam Shapiro and Judy Chicago starting the Woman's Building. And it was more dispersed, or I was not engaged with it directly uh on the east coast, when I went back. Uh, um,…yeah, I was not involved in any consciousness raising groups. Uh, I mean, it mainly kinda solitary reading and thinking that uh, uh, affected me.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: (sound has deteriorated-more white noise, less volume voice)
Yeah, the east coast-west coast differences,
um. I know it at a remove. You know, I was not directly involved. So
yeah, Faith was one of the instigators of The People's Flag Show,
and race and feminism were bi-, I became involved with these brouhahas
by the late '70s, and 1980, as a filmmaker. And throughout the '70s
there was a huge eruption of, of films by women that dealt with feminist
issues, and I was very involved with (voice trails off), and uh, with
those, and I went to conference, and um, but the art world, I was somewhat
removed from, at, at that point. Um, uh, it was the women's film world
that uh, uh, uh, engaged me.
Uh, so the work of Ulrike Ottinger, and
uh, uh, uh, Dory…?? The German filmmakers uh, uh, Sue Friedrich-you
know, there's a welter of eruption of women dealing with their own
histories…??…and with fantasies like Ottinger's work is full of
fantasies of women's, women's power. So, but what was interesting
by the late '70s and '80s, there was some conferences where black
issues and feminist issues and lesbian issues uh clashed. And I was
privy to some of those uh, uh, confrontations at conferences.
Um, my own work, um, uh, was the, the
uh, the object of some brouhahas. The women's Art Journal-I forget
who the editor of that was-invited Lucy (?) to interview me. And the
editor wrote this uh, uh, very stinging uh uh criticism of my second
film, "A film about a woman who." And that brought to a head the,
uh, polemics around accessibility, elitism, documentary, fiction, uh,
positive images of women or uh, uh images of women that were uh, uh,
shown to be more abject or conflicted, and that was a criticism about
A Film about a Woman Who that uh, is not a positive image of, of women.
And even after my fourth uh film, The Man Who Envied Women" a feminist
asked me, uh, uh, "Why didn't you make a film about a woman?"
Well, this is a film where all you see
is two men who play this single character, protagonist, a, a Marxist
professor, who's a sexist. But on the sound track you hear the voice
of the woman who is never seen. But she's the controlling commentator
about the action, about these men. Uh, and uh this is a direct result
of having read Laura Mulvey's seminal essay, "Narrative Cinema and
Visual," visual, visual culture, something like that. I got it wrong.
Huh? Pleasure! Yes. Narrative cinema, Thank you. "Narrative Cinema
and Visual Pleasure."
Uh, uh, which was a brilliant critique
of uh, uh, Hollywood films of the 'forties and 'fifties and the
objectification of women. So I decided that to remove the physical manifestation
of the woman entirely, and, and uh, and so for me, it was very much
about a woman. Her absence, and her voice. In her physical absence and
her voice. So you know, along the way, I've had an interesting relation
to uh, um, what, a kind of orthodox feminism.
Uh, uh, but I certainly continue to call myself a feminist. And as long as, uh, uh, women make less money than men, and there's so few Congresspeople, women, et cetera, et cetera, there's certainly not evidence of uh across the board equality in our society, and throughout the world, women are in such abject, uh, uh, demeaned positions. I must call myself a feminist and uh, uh, uh, and I think this current generation I see signs of uh, of uh younger women coming back after the backlash in the '90s. I think it's inevitable. As long as we have to struggle for abortion rights, we have to call ourselves feminists.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Um, yeah, these issues around
race and feminism, uh, that uh, emerged in the '70s and '80s, um,
um…what's the name of, blank on that name, (scratches and
rubbing head) …sexuality, you know, Lesbianism. Um, the purple menace-who
was it who, uh, Betty Friedan, who called Lesbians the "purple menace."
And uh, I remember the, the, this uh group, uh, this, this comic group,
The Boys in the Hall, Canadian group, who did this skit. And one of
them said, "I would like to be a Lesbian, because they get so much
work done." So there's this history uh in, among feminists, of Lesbians
doing all the grunt work in producing conferences, and the leg work,
and uh, and yet they were not acknowledged as, their interests were
not acknowledged. And the same thing with black women, when they met
uh, um, feminists who um, uh, uh, were promoting sisterhood.
And of course black women have totally
different experience from white women, and they, they uh, uh, uh, with
good reason, uh, uh, pointed out the privilege that white feminists
were not acknowledging. And so these uh, these issues sometimes erupted
at uh at conferences. Uh, uh, and were not always productive, but they
forced people like me, who were somewhat slow to uh realize my own privilege
as a white woman, uh, that this ideal of sisterhood had to be earned
in some way, and um, um, uh, and they were black filmmakers.
The L.A. Rebellion of Julie Dash and
Charles uh Burnett. These films were a wakeup call to me about black
experience. Very important to me. And uh, uh, and influential, and when
I began my fifth feature, "Privilege."-sixth? I don't know,
yeah, sixth. Which was about race and about aging, I tried to get a
lot of different kinds of issues into it, and um, it nearly drove me
crazy, because uh, uh, speaking for a black character was very difficult,
it was very difficult to write, and uh, uh, it met a very mixed response
on both whites and black uh observers and critics. It's interesting.
Um…Yeah, but it was not always easy going for feminists, both black and white, at, at these uh gatherings.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Well, innovations-in the
art world or…?
I, somehow I'm flashing on very startling
uh work. In the '70s, uh, here in Chi-, in the, in the legitimizing
of women's work, like Miriam Shapiro's, uh, uh, using uh, uh, embroidery
and traditional um, uh, uh, feminine, so-called feminine materials-lace
and doilies and all these things that one associates with uh the home,
domesticity. Uh, also the use of the body, beginning with Carolee Schneemann
and uh Hannah Wilke. Um, um, um, a lot of women focusing on their bodies.
It was it was a kind of um provocation uh to the male, especially to
minimalism, which was the dominating uh art, the dominating aesthetic
throughout the, er, through the 'sixties.
Uh, and uh, innovation, my own innovations,
I don't know that-well, just the kind of um, candor of dealing with
sexual experience, uh, uh, in uh, uh, an experimental framework.. I
mean, even my earliest-it was pointed out to me by a young art historian
who looked at my early films, and she examined um a film I had, that
was made while I was in the hospital, very ill. And I had a friend come
with a Super 8, and 8-mm camera, and just film my hands, moving. Fingers.
And uh, the, they/there's something almost erotic about the way that
the fingers caress each other and movement of the hand.
So uh there's always this edge, uh, especially in my early work, of uh, uh, the, spec, spec, specificity of sexual experience and uh, uh, eroticism, although it wasn't acted out in any way the way Carolee's was, um, the use of print especially to uh, uh, convey sexual experience was there. So I guess that was kind of an innovation.
LH: What advice would you give to young artists?YR: To young artists today? What
advice would I give? Hmm……..well, um, go with what turns you on,
you know, in terms of what you see. Um, go to everything, not just your
own discipline, you know. Go to theater, (door slams) opera. Uh….um,
dance. Art. Uh, read. Um…hmm. Don't…hmm?…don't get stuck in
uh one mode of address. Uh…hmm. Why? Oh, I don't know. That's
what I tell my students. They find one idea, and uh, uh…and I, I'm,
I've always been one to mix it up, maybe it's a dialectical thing,
uh. Tried putting together things that from the outset seemed incommensurate,
and you'll find some way to connect them, and make some new meaning,
yeah.
Don't run away from meaning. Uh, don't be afraid to be didactic, but once you find yourself in a didactic cul-de-sac, pull back and put a fly in the ointment. Hmm.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: What was a turning point in
terms of success? I would say-well, I was certainly not successful
as an actor, and there was good reason for that. I'm not a talented
actor. (scratching head all during this) But not being a talented dancer
was a different kettle of fish. Because I knew, or I thought I would
never get into an established dance company. My legs are too short,
I'm not limber, I'm not musical, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so I
knew I would have to make my own work. Uh, uh, so from the moment uh
I made my first solo, I sensed it was uh, uh, people were impressed.
I mean, the feedback was positive.
And so, you know, one small success gives
you courage, uh, confirmation, and you go on. Uh…Yeah. I, I like to
say, I wanted to knock their socks off, and uh, uh, I didn't want
fame. I've never courted publicity or, in my films, I never had fantasies
of crossing over into making successful, uh, even 35 mm films. (scratching
head) Uh, but that first solo, uh, as I stood there, uh, uh, in the
studio is a uh, in Merce Cunningham's studio, the solo had been made
in a workshop conducted by Robert Dunne, 1960. Uh, there was a movement,
a series of gestures that went …mm…mm..mmm..
And this act of covering the breast,
touching your own body in such a, a place, I knew I had them, you know.
That I'd made a mark, that no one had ever seen that before. I mean,
maybe they had…huh?
Yeah, uh, I knew from my first solo,
especially one part of it, that I would fulfill this desire to uh, knock
their socks off, and it was a series of gestures that went…makes the
gestures…and that act of covering uh that part of the body, touching
oneself there, as far as I knew, no one had ever done that before. And
in fact, a friend of mine, a dancer, said that when she saw that, she
gasped, it was so shocking. 1960-we were barely out of the 'fifties.
Uh, Tricia Brown always reminds me of
uh when we were both at Anne Halprin's workshop, in the summer of
1960, um, there was a, uh, uh, an exercise to speak, free-associate
words, while doing simple actions. Actually, I had sprained my ankle,
so I couldn't really move around much, so while I was speaking, I
chose to take objects out of my bag, and one of the objects was a Tampon,
in its paper wrapping. And Tricia said she nearly plotzed when she saw
that. I mean, that was an unspeakable object. You didn't display it
in public.
And uh, so, there was this kind of uh, transgression that uh, I was uh, pursuing, investigating, from very early on. Um….You know, I, uh, probably, uh, there was nude dancing in the '30s, Helen Tamirez, I think a lot of early modern dancers danced, explored nude, uh, nudity as a costume. But, uh…(long pause) And in the '60s. there was a lot of it. Uh…Ya, Gusama, what's her first name? She did "Events on Wall Street with nudity. Olenberg, "Happenings," uh, Whitman-there was a lot of exploration of this. But in dance, uh, there was uh…I mean, the radical things that were happening in Judson were experiments with chance operations. And uh, ordinary movement, pedestrian movement, walking, running, eating, uh, et cetera. Yeah.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: No, I never saw any of Suzanne Lacy's work….
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: I didn't testify. I attended one of the sessions. Yeah.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: And uh, Ruby Rich, um, yeah,
I gave information about my experience with Carl Andre, but uh, I mean,
I didn't have, he was a friend. I lived with Robert Morris for seven
years, and Rosemary Castoro and Carl Andre were friends. But uh, by
the time he was with (?) I didn't, I didn't, and I was separated
from Morris, so I didn't know him.
YR: Where'd you get that idea that I testified?
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Oh! Oh, oh yeah!…I'd forgot about that, that yeah, the art world around him included women artists. Yeah. yeah. But I didn't testify, I didn't have anything to say.
LH: [Question inaudible]YR: Uh, uh, well, what am I doing
now? Uh, let's see. I returned to dance in 2000, largely because of
Mikhail Baryshnikov, who invited me to make a dance for his White Oak
dance uh project. Uh, and I made a half-hour piece. Uh, and uh, subsequently,
uh, I was asked by Annie B. Parsons, who was curat- programming, uh,
she's a, uh, oh, a choreographer in New York, who was a guest curator
for Dane Theater Workshop. And I was asked to do something around Stravinsky,
and I chose to do a kind of revision of Balanchine's, Balanchine and
Stravinsky's collaboration Agon. And so I made that for four women,
and then I got interested in doing a revision of the Rite of Spring,
and uh, with the same four women, and that's what I'm working on
now.
Uh, it's going to be at Documenta,
next year, and then it'll be at uh Performa, in New York, in the next
fall. And uh, and it may go to Berlin and other places. So uh, after
my last film in 1996, MURDER and murder, it just seemed too difficult
to raise money for features, uh, I'd gotten a lot of once-in-a-lifetime
grants-not a lot, but enough to make films, uh, into the mid-90s.
Uh, and, uh…yeah, and then I wrote poetry for a year, and then this
re-interest in dance, kind of, I, I seem to go where the wind blows.
One thing leads to another, and uh. And I wrote a memoir. I didnt'
have much to do for a couple of years, and I wrote a memoir.
That's come out, MIT Press came out this year. And um, so that's…the story, mm? Well! Well, that was short!
[End of Interview]