Introduction: Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019)

This is an introduction to a dossier on the work and life of Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019). Schneemann was celebrated in a memorial service at Judson Memorial Church in New York. The service included Malcolm Goldstein's improvisational performance on violin titled Soundings for Carolee. The seven essays in this dossier, derived in part from remarks delivered at the service, comprise a range of critical “soundings” of Schneemann's work and life.

On Carolee

The essay celebrates Carolee Schneemann, the author's friend and colleague since their first meeting in the early 1960s at Judson Memorial Church, New York. The essay describes the author's and Schneemann's participation in the dance workshops at Judson. The essay cites select works produced by Schneemann at Judson, including Lateral Splay (1962) and Meat Joy (1964). The essay reflects on the relation between the dance workshops and Schneemann's work in painting. It gives particular focus to Schneemann's canonic “solo” Interior Scroll (1975) and the author's experience of the artist's retrospective exhibition Kinetic Painting at MoMA PS1 in 2018. The author presented this essay in the memorial service for Schneemann at Judson Memorial Church on 3 May 2019.

Carolee Schneemann's Sonic Shadow

This commemorative essay considers Carolee Schneemann's voice as expressed through performative utterances and written words, with particular focus on Interior Scroll (1975). The essay argues that the performance's documentation in photographs, the primary means of experiencing the work, has come at the expense of attention to Schneemann's voice. The essay reflects on the work of evoking Schneemann's voice through limited records in relation to the process of grief following the artist's death. Schneemann's “sonic shadow,” the essay argues, emerges through affirmative mourning. The essay was composed originally for the memorial service for Schneemann at Judson Memorial Church, New York, on 3 May 2019.

House Body House

The essay describes Carolee Schneemann's residence, a stone house constructed in 1750 by Huguenot settlers on land of the Munsee Lenape people, and its central role in her life and work from the early 1960s until her death in 2019. The essay gives particular attention to Schneemann's text “Parts of a Body House” (1957–67), a series of paragraphs composed over a decade that describe a network of biomorphic structures and multimedia environments. The essay argues that “Parts of a Body House” is a “nerve codex” by which to read the artist's life and work. The essay is derived in part from remarks the author delivered at the memorial service for Schneemann at Judson Memorial Church, New York, on 3 May 2019.

Burnout prevention pilot intervention for healthcare workers during COVID-19

Background: Burnout is often prevalent among healthcare workers (HCWs) given the stressful nature of their work. COVID-19 has intensified HCW burnout, and little is known about burnout prevention interventions that may help alleviate HCW burnout during COVID-19.Methods: This study adopted a pre-experimental post-test only design. The sample (n = 53) was adult HCWs at a large metropolitan-area hospital. The intervention consisted of a memorial service that included music by a music therapist, chaplain support, and mindfulness-promoting provisions.Results: Results showed that 33.9 percent of participants reported currently feeling burned out and 98.1 percent of participants found the intervention helpful. Feedback from participants showed that they thoroughly appreciated the opportunity to pause and remember.Conclusion: Given the promising results of this pilot study, coupled with increased burden of the COVID-19 pandemic, burnout interventions for HCWs should be further explored.

Toward an Affective Sense of Life: Artificial Intelligence, Animacy, and Amusement at a Robot Pet Memorial Service in Japan

This essay analyzes the organization of Buddhist memorial services for robot pets in Japan against the backdrop of emerging markets for robots equipped with artificial emotional intelligence. It demonstrates how an evocative “sense of life” (seimeikan) becomes both a target of design for robotics engineers and an affective capacity of robot users who care for and through companion robots. Documenting how users cultivate a sense of amusement toward robots that neither neglects nor negates analytical distinctions between the artificial and the living but rather playfully holds them together in the figure of a living robot, the article illustrates how practices of care become affective tools for understanding life altered by developments in AI. Such findings render animacy as an open and exercisable capacity, responsive to technoscientific change, and generative of theoretical inspiration for how anthropologists might similarly exercise affect as a particularly productive method of fieldwork within machine-inclusive multispecies societies. 抄録 本論文は 感情認識AI（人工知能）を搭載した一般消費者向けロボットの登場を背景に営まれるようになった日本におけるペットロボットの法要について考察するものである。特に「生命感」の喚起がいかにロボット開発におけるデザインのターゲットになると同時に、ユーザーがロボットとケアを介した関係性を結ぶ際の情動的能力の所産の対象にもなっているかということを明らかにする。ロボットと接するなかでユーザー達は分析的に対置される人工物と生命体との違いを無視したり否定したりするのではなく、むしろそれらを享楽的に結合させてロボットの存在を捉えるアミューズメントの心を高めている。この記述を通して、本論文はロボットへのケアの実践が人工知能の発展によって変わりつつある生命のあり方を理解する情動的手段になっていることを描き出す。このような知見は、対象物に生物性や生物らしさを感じるアニマシーの知覚が柔軟で状況に応じて発揮することが可能な能力であり、科学技術の変化にも応じることが出来るということを表しているだけでなく、機械を含むマルチ・スピーシーズ社会における有益なフィールドワークの手法として人類学者自身もどのように情動をうまく取り込むことができるかという理論的な閃きを生成する契機にもなったのである。

Coda: “It’s a Miserable Life”

This chapter begins with Roth’s comic assessment of his own career as an author shared with a young writer and then analyzes his final volume, the essay collection Why Write? It then examines how he spent his time after he gave up writing fiction, while noting his final public reading on 8 May 2014 in New York. His death in New York on 22 May 2018 and the international reaction to the news follows. His funeral at Bard College in May 2018 and his memorial service held at the New York Public Library on 25 September 2018 were occasions to honor and remember the writer. His efforts to complete his personal story, even from the grave, via instructions to his biographer and others. He always meant to be in control.