Illinois Central Transposed (1969)

A compilation of Schneemann's anti-Vietnam War group performances, this work merges film projection, sound and slide systems, light beams, audience and performer action in a sensory collage linking the exposed Illinois landscape to the devastation in Vietnam. Writes Schneemann: "I think of this work as an exploded canvas, units of rapidly changing clusters. A flow of energy which makes an active audience inevitable and necessary — not to mimic the performance, but to absorb relations within the space and between one another — to be correspondent to the materials and imagery, grasping a conscious and realizable wish to replace the performers with themselves."