Day 13: Interior Scroll

"I first wrote about 'vulvic space' in 1960 as a result of an art history assignment on symbolism. I chose to do research on the 'Transmigration of the Serpent,' never suspecting that the transmutation of serpent symbolism in the wall paintings, carvings, inscriptions of ancient cultures- this traditionally 'phallic' symbolism would lead me to a concept of vulvic space and this in turn to the disappearance and mis-attribution of Goddess artifacts and imagery, to a total inversion and re-interpretation of myth and symbol."







"I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by its passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiraled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries, attributes of both female and male sexual powers. This source of 'interior knowledge' would be symbolized as the primary index unifying spirit and flesh in Goddess worship."






"The message I read for Interior Scroll is from the feminist texts in 'Kitch's Last Meal.' The image occurred as a drawing; this image seemed to have to do with the power and possession of naming- the movement of interior thought to external signification, and the reference to an uncoiling serpent, to actual information (like a ticker tape, rainbow, torah in the ark, chalice, choir loft, plumb line, bell tower, the umbilicus and tongue)."




"Interior Scroll was preformed twice. Each 'reading' required a ritual preparation for the action, a gradual inhabitation of the space, increasing concentration"

-Carolee Schneemann on the making of and performance of Interior Scroll, from More Than Meat Joy