2009

“I am in relation to flora and fauna but I feel much more fragile and undefined and actually insignificant, that’s why I love perfume, it has no visual or physical form. I feel like a combination of thoughts and memories, like Carolee Schneemann on an acid trip in the 60s that she wrote a text about called ‘Hormones Circling’ (1966?), reproduced I think in the artist book Parts Of A Body House Book. In the end I wanted to melt into nature, become part of it… dissolve…” – SMW.

“In the series, you are often holding a cigarette. In one of the photographs, you also urinate into the vegetation. Does smoking/urinating in nature mean something concrete in this piece?” – AC. “This also goes back to Hannah Wilke. Who peed in a photo in the 70s which she made into a conceptual art work with text from a male writer. A very complex gesture, which she was so good at. Urinating and smoking are both natural acts, so it had to do with just being natural and human and animal in nature. Cigarettes, when I did smoke, felt very artificial although smoking is such a pleasureable activity. I used to smoke about a pack a day for 10 years.” – SMW.

“I think part of why I faced the camera was as always to give back to the women who came before me who got naked. My genital/penis is an important part of that. Not that I revere it, not any more than other parts of my body (I think I revere my ass/hole), but it’s a gender marker.” – SMW.

“Rural scents can turn you into Cinderella or // sink your carriage in the dirt. // S-h-e smokes industrial cigarettes. // Humans turned to pumpkins. // Take the other path, they said. We are not all made to be pretty little red riding hoods with plenty of food to appease the masters. // We are all not that organic.” – AC.

“Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings always seemed to be about confronting and conquering nature. I guess this is open to interpretation and I don’t know that much about it. I’ve never gone that deep into it… I want to be part of nature. Not confront it.” – SMW.

“Hannah used to talk about being spontaneous and I think this is mainly what it is all about, being spontaneous and not planning too much when working. Like grooving with the energies of the universe will provide ultimate meaning.” – SMW.

“I was just reminded of interviewer Charlie Rose asking why performance artist Karen Finley (she does all kinds of things) smeared her breasts with liquid chocolate during a performance, and she answered that she also smeared her elbows with the chocolate. Carolee Schneemann wanted her elbows to have the same priority as her genitals, as her vulva, etc. and when she was in art school it was okay to paint from a nude female model and for Carolee to pose for her male co-students, but when she did a nude self portrait painting with legs up and spread then it was considered obscene.” – SMW.