SCREEN REASSEMBLING
Away Across
in collaboration with Denise Newman
ASL interpreter Jesada Pua
A site/book/film intervention performance at the Wattis Institute Huckleberry Finn show.
Taking material from The River a film by Pare Lorentz and the original version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, we engage the Mississippi River, the center of Lorentz’s film and Twain’s story.
Tributaries form:
Jesada Pua signs illustrations from the original text.
2010
(excerpt)
C to C: Several Centuries After the Double Slit Experiment
Ocean waves projected onto rectangular satin flags supported on C stands. The flags, usually black and used to block light, here are sewn with white reflective material, and are arranged in multiple planes on the apron of a theatre. The projection screen curtain is left open only a slit, a nod to Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment.
The installation’s duration is dictated by Michael Snow's film Wavelength, playing concurrently at the rear of the theater, the soundtrack of which is heard along with C notes played live on piano.
The piece is a meditation on waves and particles, sound and light, and the history of science, cinematic space, and America.
1995
16mm film, C stands, gobo arms, cine flags, sandbags, live piano
images: John White
Dry Earth and Water
A loop of 16mm film panning cracked earth is projected on top of a cracked earth surface. At one point one frame of the film loop and the constructed earth cracks sync.
1985
16mm film loop, earth, glue, water sounds, speaker
Fish and Liposuction
A loop projection of swimming fish plays with the sound of a cosmetic surgeon describing different cosmetic procedures for breast augmentation and liposuction. Bubbles float in the path of the projector light.
1990
16mm film, bubbles
I-580: Hero and Leander
While trying to reach Oleander blossoms for his lover Hero, Leander drowns in the Hellespont. In the morning Hero was heard crying out “O Leander, O Leander!” Leander’s body was found with flowers still clasped in his hands. The Oleander blossom became an image of everlasting love.
These beautiful pink and white flowers were brought from the Mediterranean to California in the 60’s. Now these invasive flowers line highways throughout the state.
Part of my ongoing diaspora of plant investigations.
2002
16mm film loop, print pigment, Fresnel lens
Latent Light Excavations: Reno
I exposed film to three sites related to Reno’s past and present history: Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation Exposure: As Long as the Rivers Flow, a sacred place, a site of on-going struggle: geological presence, Native American history, and the pressures of contemporary urbanization; Chapel of the Bells Wedding Chapel Exposure: To have and to hold, a drive through wedding chapel, marriage—a site of hopes fulfilled and frustrated. There was no gay marriage in Reno wedding chapels at this time; and El Dorado Exposure: House Stands on 17, a casino in Reno. The city of gold is the imagined image of infinite wealth.
The three film to digital performances (see Latent Light Excavations) are projected in the gallery space to create a light filled chamber.
2004
16mm film to digital projections, plexi screens
Listen to the world waking
During Covid I worked again with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, this time for six months on Zoom.
We talked about finding a place where choristers could reflect, sit and listen over the course of six months.
Some choristers went to gardens and parks; some found spaces inside their homes. They sat, then took notes, then collected objects, then sound and video. They sent me all of this collected material. From their texts, my long time collaborator Denise Newman and I wrote a libretto. The choristers composed the music and sang the lyrics. I scanned their objects and made a video using all of these materials.
2021
video
〜 libretto 〜
Nothing But Ways/In Transit: Between and Beyond
in collaboration with Trinh T. Minh-ha
An installation made as a tribute to the love of poetry, with a focus on the work of twelve women poets. An encounter of poetry on a cinematic canvas, the installation features the basic components of both media to offer a spatial experience of the screen/page. The event is also a walk into the body through word passages and a play on the activities of reflecting, projecting, and vibrating that define the creative process of writing and reading.
Reimagined and restaged twenty years later, with the addition of two French poets and digital lights, the installation is a tribute to the state of between-ness and renewal innate to the experience of Marseille as a city of transit – and more specifically to the Villa Air-Bel as a site of refuge and encounter for poets, artists, activists, and thinkers. The vibrant diversity of Marseille makes it a physically and spiritually intense city. When living in a time as unpredictably fragile as ours, the paths and passages creatively pursued are full of internal and external surprises.
Poets: Etel Adnan, Mei-mei Berssenbruge, Patricia Dienstfrey, Kathleen Frazer, Barbara Guest, Erica Hunt, June Jordan, Myung Mi Kim, Audre Lourde, Wendy Rose, Rena Rosenwasser, Alma Villanueva, and Simone Yoyotte, Laure aka Collette Pierot
1999, 2020
tracking pivoting Fresnel lights, motion sensors, acetate film panels of different neutral density, reflective vinyl lettering, contact microphones, speakers, 1999
pivoting digital lights, acetate film panels of different neutral density, reflective vinyl lettering, 2020
images: John White
Outside the Gold Frame, Inside the Car Window
One 16mm loop projection has scenes of blowing grass, shot on a tripod, that move from wide shot to medium shot to close-up and fade to a white screen. The film is projected beyond a gold frame so that the ornate frame is periodically illuminated. The other 16mm loop projects a step-printed (jerky) geological landscape filmed out of a moving car window. The image fades to black and is projected inside a gold frame.
Both images are projected onto cut outs of walls, roughly hewn with a chainsaw. These constructed walls are painted the same color as the museum gallery walls in which the rest of the curated California landscape show appears. Originally part of a landscape exhibition, as a film, it was relegated to the theater.
Installation appeared on the apron of the theater. To view the installation, the audience stood on the apron.
1995
16mm film loops, gilt frames, walls, stanchions, sandbags
images: John White
Portraits in Common Time
sound in collaboration with Michael McNabb
A 16mm film and video installation of three people speaking on telephones inside their living rooms, set inside a fourth living room set. In addition to the sound of the characters speaking through video monitors, sound is picked up from the space itself, relayed, and played back into the gallery as viewers move throughout the installation.
1992
16mm film loops, video loops, light activated sound
Screen Door
in collaboration with Bart Schneider, LED fire flies constructed and programmed with Don Lloyd
A theatrical event that unfolds through amplified voice over, ambient sound, and a series of lighted tableaux, arranged throughout the space. The text is about summer time, with fire flies and heat. Choreographed lights illuminate tableaux surrounding the viewer along with LED blinking fireflies.
1983
light, sound, computer controlled LEDs, tableaux
Synthetic Romance #17: the assault
in collaboration with Liliana Diaz Garcia
A Chatbot take on romance and sexual assault, performed with a nod to the transformative power of wind, a trope in Telenovelas.
Lili and I read from the Chatbot score next to a projection of a manikin head’s wig blowing in the wind.
2023
fan, long black wig, manikin head, sound
THE WEATHER IS NOWADAYS CRAZY
in collaboration with Atel Ednan, Gloria Frym, Miranda Mellis, Sean Negus, Simone Bailey, Denise Newman, Tom Hemphill, Christoph Steger, and Anne Hege
The gallery exhibition is anchored by 10 collaborative India ink drawings made with Etel Adnan in the winter of 2018, in Paris, on two shades of blue paper. The gallery is activated on various Saturdays by further collaborations organized for the exhibition that embrace the spirit of improvisation, accident, and mistranslation.
2021
broadsheets, dance, video, readings, percussion, cello, live tape machine, spotlight, live drone projection, mobile app
images: Hillary Goidell