Water Light / Water Needle is a video composed of two different interpretations of the same performance.

The first video is mute, in black and white, lasts 4 minutes and dates from 1966. In the courtyard of the Saint Mark Church of New York 2 ropes are stretched out one above the other, on which performers chosen by Carolee Schneemann walk and move. The shots are mainly centred on the faces and show the detail of the textures on the bodies and clothes.

The second version took place later in the same year, at Mah Wah Lake in New Jersey. The video is approximately 10 minutes long. This time it is in colour with sound. The same installation of ropes has been set up between two trees in a clearing. The eight performers move across these ropes, without touching the ground, gripping onto one another to cross.

The same performers are also filmed running naked in a lake, then lying in the sun. Schneemann imbues this performance with a form of corporeal freedom and a notion of carefree abandon. All defy gravity, whether they are attached to the ropes or carried by the water.

The soundtrack consists of a voice-over narrator and somewhat urban noises from everyday life: telephone, a distant conversation, DIY, car sirens and so on.

As in Meat Joy, produced two years earlier, Carolee Schneemann created a system while retaining an element of improvisation for the participants. With these filmed performances throughout the 1960s, she consolidated the principles of what she calls her “kinetic theatre”.

Laetitia Rouiller