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Video Installations
Untitled (Crash)
1997, video installation with carved plywood structure, collaboration
with Taylor Davis
Untitled (Crash) is a sculpture consisting of a four-foot by
eight-foot plywood frame carved in a series of intricate rectangular cuts,
one of which holds a five inch video monitor, slightly recessed into the
surrounding sculpture. As collaborators, Taylor Davis, who created the
large wooden sculpture, and I worked independently, with the agreement
that we would work entirely separately and come to a surprise conclusion,
in the manner of “exquisite corpse” artwork.
The image on the monitor is a montage of found and original footage showing
super-models, tiny kittens, car crashes, explosions, women with machine
guns, a female nude, the ocean and beautiful flowers. The video is silent
and provides a light source when viewed from a distance. When viewed close
up, which is required in order to see the images on the small monitor,
the audience is brought into the sculpture.
I’m Leaving Home Without You (You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real))
1994, video installation with tv monitor, small table and speakers
I’m Leaving Home Without You (You
Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)) presents a modest spectacle, with a small
low table holding a 13” video monitor with speakers on either side.
The installation is portable and can be placed against a wall or in any
part of the viewing space. The video is Fisher Price camcorder feedback,
which was shot from the monitor used in the installation; the audio, which
is We Gotta Get Out of This Place (1965) by Eric Burdon and the
Animals, and You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (1978) by Sylvester,
is appropriated and was recorded in real time as background to the video
feedback.
The music functions mnemonically. As I was shooting, it evoked memories
of my sister, whose involvement with drugs and hippie culture eventually
led to her accidental death in 1970. The song by The Animals was one of
her favorites. As a younger sister, the song evoked the challenges of
growing up. In the installation, I was thinking, as well, of San Francisco
as it was in the mid- to late 1970s, a remarkable city that provided refuge
and legitimacy to a generation of gay men and lesbians, but an era whose
spirit was almost lost to the new epidemic of AIDS. Sylvester’s
voice becomes celebration and lament. |
