Life’s a Dream
The Personal World of Stefanie Schneider
by Mark Gisbourne
Projection is a form of apparition that is characteristic of our human nature, for what we imagine almost invariably transcends the reality of what we live. And, an apparition, as the word suggests, is quite literally “an appearing,” for what we appear to imagine is largely shaped by the imagination of its appearance. If this sounds tautological then so be it. But the work of Stefanie Schneider is almost invariably about chance and apparition. And, it is through the means of photography, the most appari- tional of image based media, that her pictorial narratives or photo-novels are generated. Indeed, traditional photography (as distinct from new digital technology) is literally an “awaiting” for an appearance to take place, in line with the imagined image as executed in the camera and later devel- oped in the darkroom. The fact that Schneider uses out of date Polaroid film stock to take her photographs only intensifies the sense of their apparitional contents when they are realized. The stability comes only at such time when the images are re-shot and developed in the studio, and thereby fixed or ar- rested temporarily in space and time.
The unpredictable and at times unstable film she adopts for her works also creates a sense of chance within the outcome that can be imagined or potentially en- visaged by the artist Schneider. But this chance manifestation is a loosely controlled, or, better called ex- istential sense of chance, that which becomes predisposed by the imme- diate circumstances of her life and the project she is undertaking at the time. Hence the choices she makes are largely open ended choices, driv- en by a personal nature and disposition allowing for a second appearing of things, whose eventual outcome remains undefined. And, it is the alli- ance of the chance-directed material apparition of Polaroid film, in turn explicitly allied to the experiences of her personal life circumstances, that provokes the potential to create Stefanie Schneider’s open ended narra- tives. Therefore they are stories based on a degenerate set of conditions that are both material and human, with an inherent pessimism and a feel- ing for the sense of sublime ridicule being seemingly exposed. This in turn echoes and doubles the meaning of the verb “to expose.” To expose being embedded in the technical photographic process, just as much as it is in the narrative contents of Schneider’s photo-novel exposés. The form- er being the unstable point of departure, and the latter being the uncer- tain ends or meanings that are generated through the photographs’ doubled exposure.
The large number of speculative theories of apparition, literally read as that which appears, and/or creative visions in filmmaking and photography are selfevident, and need not detain us here1. But from the earliest inception of photography artists have been concerned with mani- pulated and / or chance effects, be they directed towards deceiving the viewer2, or the alchemical investigations pursued by someone like Sigmar Polke3. None of these are the real concern of the artist photographer Ste- fanie Schneider, however, but rather she is more interested with what the chance-directed appearances in her photographs portend. For Schnei- der’s works are concerned with the opaque and porous contents of hu- man relations and events, the material means are largely the mechanism to achieving and exposing the “ridiculous sublime” that has come increas- ingly to dominate the contemporary affect(s) of our world4. The uncertain conditions of today’s struggles as people attempt to relate to each other - and to themselves - are made manifest through- out her work. And, that she does this against the backdrop of the socalled “American Dream,” of a purportedly advanced culture that is Modern America makes them all the more incisive and critical as acts of photographic exposure.
From her earliest works of the late nineties one might be inclined to see her photographs as if they were a concerted attempt at an investi- gative or analytic serialisation, or, better still, a psychoanalytic dissection of the different and particular genres of American subculture. But this is to miss the point for the series though they have dates and subsequent pub- lications remain in a certain sense unfinished. Schneider’s work has little or nothing to do with reportage as such, but with recording human culture in a state of fragmentation and slippage. And, if a photographer like Diane Arbus dealt specifically with the anomalous and peculiar that made up American suburban life, the work of Schneider touches upon the alien- ation of the commonplace5. That is to say how the banal stereotypes of Western Americana have been emptied out, and claims as to any inher- ent meaning they formerly possessed have become strangely displaced. Her photographs constantly fathom the familiar, often closely connected to traditional American film genre, and make it completely unfamiliar. Of course Freud would have called this simply the unheimlich or uncanny. But here again Schneider almost never plays the role of the psychologist, or, for that matter, seeks to impart any specific meanings to the photo-graphic contents of her images. The works possess an edited behavioural narrative (she has made choices), but there is never a sense of there be- ing a clearly defined story. Indeed, the uncertainty of my reading here pre- sented, acts as a caveat to the very condition that Schneider’s photo-graphs provoke.
Invariably the settings of her pictorial narratives are the South West of the United States, most often the desert and its periphery in Southern California. The desert is a not easily identifiable space, with the suburban boundaries where habitation meets the desert even more so. There are certain subthemes common to Schneider’s work, not least that of journey- ing, on the road, a feeling of wandering and itinerancy, or simply aimless- ness. Alongside this subsidiary structural characters continually appear, the gas station, the automobile, the motel, the highway, the revolver, lo- gos and signage, the wasteland, the isolated train track and the trailer. If these form a loosely defined structure into which human characters and events are cast, then Schneider always remains the fulcrum and mechan- ism of their exposure. Sometimes using actresses, friends, her sister, col- leagues or lovers, Schneider stands by to watch the chance events as they unfold. And, this is even the case when she is a participant in front of camera of her photo-novels. It is the ability to wait and throw things open to chance and to unpredictable circumstances, that marks the develop- ment of her work over the last eight years. It is the means by which ran- dom occurrences take on such a telling sense of pregnancy in her work.
However, in terms of analogy the closest proximity to Schneider’s photographic work is that of film. For many of her titles derive directly from film, in photographic series like OK Corral (1999), Vegas (1999), West- world (1999), Memorial Day (2001), Primary Colours (2001), Suburbia (2004), The Last Picture Show (2005), and in other examples. Her works also include particular images that are titled Zabriskie Point, a photograph of her sister in an orange wig. Indeed the tentative title for the present pub- lication Stranger Than Paradise is taken from Jim Jarmusch’s film of the same title in 1984. Yet it would be dangerous to take this comparison too far, since her series 29 Palms (1999) presages the later title of a film that appeared only in 2002. What I am trying to say here is that film forms the nexus of American culture, and it is not so much that Schneider’s photographs make specific references to these films (though in some in- stances they do), but that in referencing them she accesses the same American culture that is being emptied out and scrutinised by her photo- novels. In short her pictorial narratives might be said to strip films of the stereotypical Hollywood tropes that many of them possess. Indeed, the films that have most inspired her are those that similarly deconstruct the same sentimental and increasingly tawdry ‘American Dream’ peddled by Hollywood. These include films like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986),
Wild at Heart (1990), The Lost Highway, (1997), John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) or films like Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise with all its girl-power Bonny and Clyde-type clichés6. But they serve no more than as a backdrop, a type of generic tableau from which Schneider might take human and abstracted elements, for as commercial films they are not the product of mere chance and random occurrence. Notwithstanding this ob- servation, it is also clear that the gender deconstructions that the charac- ters in these films so often portray, namely the active role of women pos- sessed of a free and autonomous sexuality (even victim turned vamp), frequently find resonances within the behavioural events taking place in Schneider’s photographs and DVD sequences; the same sense of sexual autonomy that Stefanie Schneider possesses and is personally committed to.
In the series 29 Palms (first begun in 1999) the two women charac- ters Radha and Max act out a scenario that is both infantile and adoles- cent. Wearing brightly coloured fake wigs of yellow and orange, a parody of the blonde and the redhead, they are seemingly trailer park white trash possessing a sentimental and kitsch taste in clothes totally inappropriate to the locality. The fact that Schneider makes no judgment about this is an interesting adjunct. Indeed, the photographic projection of the images is such that the girls incline themselves to believe that they are both beau- tiful and desirous. However, unlike the predatory role of women in say Richard Prince’s photographs, which are simply a projection of a male fantasy onto women, Radha and Max are self-contained in their vacuous if empty trailer and motel world of the swimming pool, nail polish, and child- ish water pistols. Within the photographic sequence Schneider includes herself, and acts as a punctum of disruption. Why is she standing in front of an Officers’ Wives Club? Why is Schneider not similarly attired? Is there a proximity to an army camp, are these would-be Lolita(s) Rahda and Max wives or American marine groupies, and where is the centreand focus of their identity? It is the ambiguity of personal involvement that is set up by Schneider which deliberately makes problematic any clear sense of narrative construction. The strangely virulent colours of the bleached-out girls stand in marked contrast to Schneider’s own anodyne sense of self-image. Is she identifying with the contents or directing the scenario? With this series, perhaps, more than any other, Schneider creates a feeling of a world that has some degree of symbolic order. For ex-ample the girls stand or squat by a dirt road, posing the question as to their sexual and personal status. Following the 29 Palms series, Schneider will trust herself increasingly by diminishing the sense of a staged environment.The events to come will tell you both everything and nothing, re- veal and obfuscate, point towards and simultaneously away from anyclearly definable meaning.
If for example we compare 29 Palms to say Hitchhiker (2005), and where the sexual contents are made overtly explicit, we do not find the same sense of simulated identity. It is the itinerant coming together of two characters Daisy and Austen, who meet on the road and subsequently share a trailer together. Presented in a sequential DVD and still format, we become party to a would-be relationship of sorts. No information is given as to the background or social origins, or even any reasons as to why these two women should be attracted to each other. Is it acted out? Are they real life experiences? They are women who are sexually free in expressing themselves. But while the initial engagement with the subject is orchestrated by Schneider, and the edited outcome determined by the artist, beyond that we have little information with which to construct a story. The events are commonplace, edgy and uncertain, but the viewer is left to decide as to what they might mean as a narrative. The disaggre- gated emotions of the work are made evident, the game or role playing, the transitory fantasies palpable, and yet at the same time everything is insubstantial and might fall apart at any moment. The characters relate but they do not present a relationship in any meaningful sense. Or, if they do, it is one driven by the coincidental juxtaposition of random emotions. Should there be an intended syntax it is one that has been stripped of the power to grammatically structure what is being experienced. And, this seems to be the central point of the work, the emptying out not only of a particu- lar American way of life, but the suggestion that the grounds upon which it was once predicated are no longer possible. The photo-novel Hitchhiker is porous and the culture of the seventies which it might be said to hom- age is no longer sustainable. Not without coincidence, perhaps, the dec- ade that was the last ubiquitous age of Polaroid film.
In the numerous photographic series, some twenty or so, that occur between 29 Palms and Hitchhikers, Schneider has immersed herself and scrutinised many aspects of suburban, peripheral, and scrubland Amer- ica. Her characters, including herself, are never at the centre of cultural affairs. Such eccentricities as they might possess are all derived from what could be called their adjacent status to the dominant culture of America. In fact her works are often sated with references to the sentimental sub- strata that underpin so much of American daily life. It is the same whether it is flower gardens and household accoutrements of her photo-series Suburbia (2004), or the transitional and environmental conditions depicted in The Last Picture Show (2005). The artist’s use of sentimental song ti- tles, often adapted to accompany individual images within a series by Schneider, show her awareness of America’s close relationship between popular film and music. For example the song ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’, becomes Leaving in a Jet Plane as part of The Last Picture Show series, while the literalism of the plane in the sky is shown in one element of this diptych, but juxtaposed to a blondewigged figure first seen in 29 Palms. This indicates that every potential narrative element is open to continual reallocation in what amounts to a story without end. And, the interchange- able nature of the images, like a dream, is the state of both a pictorial and affective flux that is the underlying theme pervading Schneider’s photo-narratives. For dream is a site of yearning or longing, either to be with o without, a human pursuit of a restless but uncertain alternative to our daily reality.
The scenarios that Schneider sets up nonetheless have to be in- itiated by the artist. And, this might be best understood by looking at her three recent DVD sequenced photo-novels, René’s Dream and Sidewind- er (2005). We have already considered the other called Hitchhikers. In the case of Sidewinder the scenario was created by internet where she met J.D. Rudometkim, an ex-theologian, who agreed to her idea to live with her for five weeks in the scrubland dessert environment of Southern California. The dynamics and unfolding of their relationship, both sexual- ly and emotionally, became the primary subject matter of this series of photographs. The relative isolation and their close proximity, the inter- active tensions, conflicts and submissions, are thus recorded to reveal the day-to-day evolution of their relationship. That a time limit was set on this relation-based exper- iment was not the least important aspect of the pro- ject. The text and music accompanying the DVD were written by the Amer- ican Rudometkin, who speaks poetically of “Torn Stevie. Scars from the weapon to her toes an accidental act of God her father said. On Vaness at California.” The mix of hip reverie and fantasy-based language of his text, echoes the chaotic unfolding of their daily life in this period, and is evident in the almost sun-bleached Polaroid images like Whisky Dance, where the two abandon themselves to the frenetic circumstances of the moment. Thus Sidewinder, a euphemism for both a missile and a rat- tlesnake, hints at the libidinal and emotional dangers that were risked by Schneider and Rudometkim. Perhaps, more than any other of her photo- novels it was the most spontaneous and immediate, since Schneider’s direct participation mitigated against and narrowed down the space be- tween her life and the art work. The explicit and open character of their relationship at this time (though they have remained friends), opens up the question as the biographical role Schneider plays in all her work. She both makes and directs the work while simultaneously dwelling within the artistic processes as they unfold. Hence she is both author and character, conceiving the frame within which things will take place, and yet subject to the same unpredictable outcomes that emerge in the process.
In René’s Dream, issues of role reversal take place as the cowgirl on her horse undermines the male stereotype of Richard Prince’s ‘Marl- boro Country’. This photo-work along with several others by Schneider, continue to undermine the focus of the male gaze, for her women are increasingly autonomous and subversive. They challenge the male role of sexual predator, often taking the lead and undermining masculine role play, trading on male fears that their desires can be so easily attained. That she does this by working through archetypal male conventions of American culture, is not the least of the accomplishments in her work. What we are confronted with frequently is of an idyll turned sour, the filmic clichés that Hollywood and American television dramas have promoted for fifty years. The citing of this in the Romantic West, where so many of the male clichés were generated, only adds to the diminishing sense of substance once at- tributed to these iconic American fabrications. And, that she is able to do this through photographic images rather than film, undercuts the domi- nance espoused by time-based film. Film feigns to be seamless though we know it is not. Film operates with a story board and setting in which scenes are elaborately arranged and pre-planned. Schneider has thus been able to generate a genre of fragmentary events, the assemblage of a story without a storyboard. But these post-narratological stories require another component, and that component is the viewer who must bring his own interpretation as to what is taking place. If this can be considered the upside of her work, the downside is that she never positions herself by giving a personal opinion as to the events that are taking place in her photographs. But, perhaps, this is nothing more than her use of the operation of chance dictates.
I began this essay by speaking about the apparitional contents of Stefanie Schneider’s pictorial narratives, and meant at that time the literal and chance-directed ‘appearing’ qualities of her photo-graphs. Perhaps, at this moment we should also think of the metaphoric contents of the word ap- parition. There is certainly a spectre- like quality also, a ghostly uncertainty about many of the human experi- ences found in her subject matter. Is it that the subculture of the American Dream, or the way of life Schneider has chosen to record, has in turn become also the phantom of it former self? Are these empty and fragmented scenarios a mirror of what has become of contemporary America? There is certainly some affection for their contents on the part of the artist, but it is somehow tainted with pessimism and the impossibility of sustainable human relations, with the dissolute and commercial distractions of America today. Whether this is the way it is, or, at least, the way it is perceived by Schnei- der is hard to assess. There is a bleak lassitude about so many of her characters. But then again the artist has so inured herself into this con- text over a long protracted period that the boundaries between the events and happenings photographed, and the personal life of Stefanie Schneider, have become similarly opaque. Is it the diagnosis of a condition, or just a recording of a phenomenon? Only the viewer can de- cide this question. For the status of Schneider’s certain sense of uncer- tainty is, perhaps, the only truth we may ever know.
1 Kerry Brougher (ed.), Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, ex. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1996)
2 Im Reich der Phantome: Fotographie des Unsichtbaren, ex. cat., Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach/Kunsthalle Krems/FotomuseumWinterthur, (Ostfildern-Ruit, 1997)
3 Photoworks: When Pictures Vanish – Sigmar Polke, Museum of Contemporary Art (Zürich-Berlin-New York, 1995)
4 Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, Walter Chapin
Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, Occasional Papers, no. 1,
2000.
5 Diane Arbus, eds. Doon Arbus, and Marvin Israel (New York, 1997)
6 The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions, eds. Annette Davidson and
Erica Sheen (New York, 2005); Paul A. Woods, Weirdsville USA: Obsessive Universe of David
Lynch (New York, 2000); David Lynch, Barry Gifford, Lost Highway (Screenplay, London and New
York, 1997)
Das Leben ist ein Traum
Stefanie Schneiders persönliche Welt
von Mark Gisbourne
eigentlich immer unvollendet bleiben. Ihre Arbeit hat wenig oder nichts mit
wirklicher Reportage zu tun, sondern sie hält die Kultur der Menschen im Zustand ihrer Fragmentierung und ihres Entgleitens fest. Und während eine Fotografin wie Diane Arbus sich vor allem mit den Absonderlichkeiten und Merkwürdigkeiten des Lebens in den amerikanischen Vorstädten be- schäftigte, betrifft Schneiders Werk die Entfremdungen des Alltäglichen; sie untersucht also, wie die banalen Stereotype des amerikanischen Westens ihres Sinnes entleert und wie die Ansprüche auf eine Bedeu- tung, die ihnen einmal innewohnte, merkwürdig verlagert wurden. Oft in enger Verbindung mit dem traditionellen amerikanischen Genrefilm loten ihre Fotos immer wieder das Vertraute aus und machen es zu etwas
Ihre Bildgeschichten sind immer im Südwesten der USA angesie- delt, meistens in der südkalifornischen Wüste und ihrer Peripherie. Die Wüste ist ein Ort, der nicht leicht zu bestimmen ist, und das gilt noch mehr für die Ränder der Vorstädte, wo bewohnte Gebiete auf die Wüste treffen. Es gibt bestimmte Nebenthemen, die in Schneiders Arbeiten häu- figer vorkommen, nicht zuletzt das „on the road“ Sein, das Herumziehen und Wandern oder schlicht die Ziellosigkeit. Daneben tauchen immer wie- der untergeordnete Strukturelemente auf: Tankstelle, Auto, Motel, High- way, Revolver, Logos und Schilder, Wohnwagen, Ödland, ein einsames Bahngleis. Sie bilden eine locker umrissene Struktur, in die menschliche Figuren und Begebenheiten hineingestellt werden, aber Schneider bleibt immer der Angelpunkt und Mechanismus ihrer Belichtung. Manchmal setzt sie Schauspielerinnen, Freunde, ihre Schwester, ihre Liebhaber ein, wäh- rend sie selbst daneben steht und beobachtet, wie sich zufällige Bege- benheiten entwickeln. Das trifft sogar dann zu, wenn sie vor der Kamera in ihren Fotoromanen mitspielt. In dieser Fähigkeit zu warten und die Dinge dem Zufall und unvorhersehbaren Ereignissen zu öffnen, zeigt sich die Weiterentwicklung ihrer Arbeiten über die vergangenen acht Jahre. Dadurch können Zufallsbegebenheiten in ihrem Werk eine so sprechende Ahnung von Bedeutsamkeit bekommen. lumas is not important any
Will man aber nach Analogien suchen, dann steht Schneiders foto- grafisches Werk dem Film am nächsten. Denn viele ihrer Titel leiten sich unmittelbar vom Film her, zum Beispiel Fotoserien wie OK Corral (1999), Vegas (1999), Westworld (1999), Memorial Day (2001), Primary Colours (2001), Suburbia (2004), The Last Picture Show (2005). Zu ihren Arbeiten gehören auch Einzelbilder, die den Titel Zabriskie Point tragen, eine Aufnahme ihrer Schwester in einer orangefarbenen Perücke. Auch der Arbeitstitel der vorliegenden Publikation, Stranger than Paradise, ver- dankt sie Jim Jarmuschs gleichnamigem Film aus dem Jahr 1984. Trotzdem wäre es gefährlich, den Vergleich zu weit zu treiben, da ihre Serie 29 Palms (1999), den Titel eines Films ankündigt, der erst 2002 heraus- kam. Ich will damit sagen, dass der Film den Nexus der amerikanischen Kultur darstellt und dass Schneider mit ihren Fotografien weniger auf diese Filme direkt anspielt (auch wenn sie es gelegentlich tut), als dass sie, indem sie sich auf die Filme bezieht, sich zu eben dieser amerikanischen Kultur Zugang verschafft, die sie mit ihren Fotoromanen entleert und untersucht hat. Kurz, man könnte sagen, dass ihre Bildgeschichten den Filmen die Hollywood-Klischeebilder rauben, die in vielen von ih- nen vorkommen. In der Tat wurde Schneider gerade von den Filmen am stärksten inspiriert, die auf ähnliche Weise wie sie denselben sentimenta- len und zunehmend billigen American Dream dekonstruieren, den Hollywood zu Markte trägt. Darunter befinden sich Filme wie David Lynchs Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) und Lost Highway (1997) sowie John Dahls The Last Seduction (1994) oder Filme wie Ridley Scotts Thelma and Louise mit all seinen Girlpower-Allüren und Bonny and Clyde-Klischees. Aber diese Filme dienen nur als Hintergrund, als eine Art übergreifendes Tableau, dem Schneider menschliche und abstrakte Elemente entnehmen kann, denn sie sind kommerzielle Filme und keine Ergebnisse des reinen Zufalls und wahlloser Begebenheiten. Es ist aber ebenso deutlich, dass die Dekonstruktionen der Geschlechterrollen, welche die Personen in diesen Filmen so oft zur Schau stellen, ins- besondere die aktive Rolle von Frauen mit einer freien und autonomen Sexualität (etwa das zum Vamp gewordene Opfer), oft in den Verhaltens-mustern anklingen, die sich in Schneiders Fotografien und DVD-Sequenzen ereignen. Es handelt sich hierbei um ein Bewusstein sexueller Autonomie, das auch Schneider hat und für das sie sich einsetzt.
ner unbefestigten Straße und werfen damit die Frage nach ihrem sexu- ellen und persönlichen Status auf. Nach der Serie 29 Palms gewinnt Schneider immer mehr Selbstvertrauen und nimmt den Eindruck, man hätte es mit einer Kulisse zu tun, zurück. Die künftigen Ereignisse erzählen ei- nem zugleich alles und nichts, sie enthüllen und vernebeln, sie weisen auf eine klar erkennbare Bedeutung hin und zugleich auch von dieser weg.|
Vergleichen wir 29 Palms etwa mit Hitchhiker (2005), wo die sexu- ellen Inhalte überdeutlich gemacht werden, so treffen wir dort nicht auf dieselbe Auffassung von simulierter Identität. Daisy und Austen, zwei Fi- guren, die unterwegs sind, begegnen einander auf der Straße und teilen später denselben Wohnwagen. Wir werden Zeugen einer Möchtegern-
beiden sind später Freunde geblieben) wirft die Frage nach der biogra- phischen Rolle auf, die Schneider in ihrem gesamten Werk spielt. Sie erschafft das Kunstwerk und führt Regie, lebt aber gleichzeitig in eben diesen im Entstehen begriffenen künstlerischen Vorgängen. Also ist sie zugleich Autorin und Darstellerin, sie entwirft den Rahmen, in dem sich alles ereignet, und ist doch denselben unvorhersehbaren Ergebnissen unterworfen, die in diesem Prozess zu Tage treten.