Up to and Including Her Limits, 1973 – 1976

installation
crayon on paper, rope, harness, 16mm film projector, 6 videos
dimensions variable
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Committee on Drawings Funds and Committee on Media and Performance Art Funds, 2012

Up to and Including Her Limits was a performance and installation staged at:
Trackings, London Filmmakers Cooperative, London, 1970
Study for Up to and Including Her Limits, New Paltz, NY, 1973
Trackings, Grand Central Station, 10th Annual Avant Garde Festival, New York, NY, December 9, 1973
Performance-Installation, University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, April 11, 1974
Performance-Installation, Arts Meeting Place, London, June 18, 1974
London Filmmakers Cooperative, London, June 19, 1974
Artists Space, New York, NY, December 1, 1974
Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY, December 12–13, 1974
Performance-Installation, The Kitchen, New York, NY, February 13–14, 1976
Performance-Installation, Studio-galerie Berlin, Berlin, June 10–25, 1976

Up to and Including Her Limits was the direct result of Pollock’s physicalized painting process. In Up to and Including Her Limits, I am suspended in a tree surgeon’s harness on a three-quarter-inch Manila rope, a rope which I can raise or lower manually to sustain an entranced period of drawing—my extended arm holds crayons which stroke the surrounding walls, accumulating a web of colored marks. My entire body becomes the agency of visual traces, vestige of the body's energy in motion.

Watch Schneemann speak about the piece in MoMA's film series “Behind the Scenes: On Line: Carolee Schneemann”