My husband Clint has become quite the video artist in 2020. He is also the person who knows me and my work best. I had been taking daily videos everyday during my neoprene duration project. I wanted to understand the choreography I was creating while trying to activate the neoprene each day. I asked Clint to digest all those videos and create a video to project over us in the performance that was a collage of what those videos meant to him. The music in the below video was made by us the day of the performance. I love seeing my work through his eyes and I will be processing all the amazing data he generated in this video for years to come.
Vesper James originally made this video for Archive as Action at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center in 2019. I have pursued duration work since 2004 and ducumented since 2009. But For Archive as Action I wanted the documentation of the work to be a piece on it's own. I knew by giving the daily images to Vesper he would take the work to a place I wouldn't have gotten to on my own (two heads are better than one). His animations were a perfect way to capture the vivid energy of this project. I knew this piece had to be present at the funeral. I played it on a monitor at the top of the steps.
I had a lot going on when this performance was supposed to happen. I wavered on whether or not I had it in me to pull this off. I knew it was time to move on from the neoprene project and I thought the idea of having a funeral on my birthday was fascinating. I knew I wanted to have some beautiful images of this piece. So told myself that I would ask Aubre Lightner to shoot the performance and if she said yes that would be my sign that I should do the piece. Well . . . she said yes - and as expected her images ( in the gallery just below) are BEAUTIFUL. I love seeing my work from someone else's eyes.
The video below was shot by Noel Maghathe. This piece was performed in a narrow stairwell so it was hard to document. But I think this captures some of the essence of it.
Scroll through the gallery below to see the rest of the birthday party- it really was the perfect day. PIQUE hosted Fluxus Club before the performance where we all took turns interpreting prompts from the Fluxus workbook. Then after the performance everyone was offered pages of a vintage Ringling Brothers coloring book. These pages had just been used in the performance to symbolize sending out my wishes to become a ringmaster out into the universe. Everyone was invited to color these performance artifacts and I put the all together into 1 2d object. The party was a rainbow potluck, everyone brought amazing food and we watched my favorite circus projected on the wall. I love turning everyday events into art events it was both a birthday party and art experience.
This is an image of me with the all the
coloring pages that I had used in the
performance that I asked my friends and
family to decorate. This performance and
after party was for close friends and family
(thought anyone was welcome). I've
never had such an intimate experience
with my work.
One of my goals for 2020 was to do work that merged my husband Clint and I's artwork and ideas together more. In 2020, I made I concept shift to "teamwork" and I feel like a marriage is the ultimate team commitment. I loved that we made the music togehter, performed together and ended the piece dressed as our idealized selves/
I did take an image of the neoprene I wore every day. But I think Clint and Vesper's videos are the documentation that should represent that duration project. However - the gallery below is a photo shoot I did with Dustin Schleibaum to provide Vesper with some really high resolution images to work with. I LOVE THIS PHOTO SHOOT. It may not represent the entire project, but these images show off a lot of great neoprene pieces I made and the images capture so much energy.
