Cecilia Dougherty, early videos

Cecilia Dougherty
Videography

videosidebar

Video Clips

Kevin and Cedar

Gone

The dream and the waking

My Failure to Assimilate

Joe-Joe

The Drama of the Gifted Child

Coal Miner's Granddaughter

Video diaries

Gay Tape Butch and Femme - video stills

Early Video
1985-1987

Coat of Arms I
1987, 16:00, slow scan video
Coat of Arms I was created using slow scan television (SSTV) technology, which captures the picture from received audio waves, a technology used in early videophones. The imagery is a mixture of live studio capture and pre-recorded video that was later transmitted and converted to a slow scan image. The completed scan is a video still, and this piece uses the still image to create tableaux somewhat based on art historical references to Pop Art and the landscape genre.

Coat of Arms II
1987, 8:00
This is an edited version of the stills created in the original slow scanning process.

76 Trombones
1987, 3:30
An experiment in deflecting narrative by creating image sequences that are unrelated. Repetition of imagery and the linear nature of the medium itself encourage the viewer to construct meaning simply from interpreting the placement of images and to make thematic sense of the piece based entirely on the order of the juxtaposition of the material.

Fuck You Purdue
1987, 12:00
A re-make, or plagiarism, of Howard Fried’s 1972 videotape Fuck You, Purdue. I watched Fried’s video once without entirely understanding the content or the context, but remembering Fried’s performance in the tape and the argumentative refrain throughout, “Fuck you, Purdue, fuck you, Ward.” I created a version of the performance from memory, presenting an understanding of Fried’s work through the action of the performance itself rather than through an intellectual understanding or textual description of the content and meaning. The idea of plagiarism versus authenticity is at play in this work.

Birdland
1986, 16:00
Shot in super-8 and converted to video, is a narrative in which the concept of community is forced into the forefront by the creation of a plotless narrative about a group of women who flirt with each other, smoke cigarettes, pose with their cars, and watch television. There is no dialogue, only the sound of a saxophone being played by one of the characters.

Sick
1986, 5:30
An extemporaneous monologue about chronic illness. The piece began as a study of the camera and the relationship of the camera to the subject, and uses video as mirror and as diary. The monologue provides a specific subjectivity to the image, attaching identity and intention to the subject. A series of simple shots therefore becomes injected with signifiers of self-awareness, struggle, determination and hope.

Gay Tape: Butch and Femme
1985, 2600
A documentary about some of the regular patrons of Ollie’s Bar, a lesbian dive on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, California, during the 1980s. The piece develops as a series of monologues by four women on the subject of butch-femme role-playing. The inherently subjective gaze of the camera is balanced out by my refusal to direct the content of the monologues. I relinquished authorship in favor of revelation and avoided coming to conclusions – the speakers exist as experts in their field as well as subjects and could say whatever occurred to them. They spoke extemporaneously about their lovers, the details of their sexual identities, and their fantasies.

This work by Cecilia Dougherty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.