MFJ 54 “Focus on Carolee Schneemann”

Summer 2011

With this issue, the Millennium Film Journal takes on a new look. The design update is intended to reflect an evolution of the conception of the journal’s currency, its audiences and its general place in the world of culture. While we are still and always fundamentally linked to the history of the avant-garde film, we also recognize that contemporary artists use the moving image in many different ways, while even the medium itself takes on multiple personalities. And how could we think to maintain our connection to such vibrancy without altering our wardrobe?

It is partly fortuitous and partly deliberate that the redesign of the MFJ coincides with an issue highlighting the work of Carolee Schneemann. She is a paradigm example of an artist who uses the moving image for its intensity of cinematic presentation in some works and as a element of sculptural installation in others. Kenneth White, guest editor of the Focus on Carolee Schneemann, has assembled a collection of texts remarkable for the range of approaches and interpretive tools brought to the artist’s work, and Shona Masarin’s design reflects this kaleidescopic variety with elegance and humor.