reimagining the city, as our own: towards an architecture of inclusion (21:00, HD video, 2020)
Who has the right to the city? Who is allowed to linger on its streets, to see oneself in its landscapes, included and represented in its conceptions of ‘the public’? Who gets to participate in the conversation about what our cities should or could be? Through the creative examination of ‘unpleasant design,' this video imagines public space through the needs and uses of marginally housed and houseless San Francisco residents. The film is a collaboration between San Francisco based filmmaker Irene Gustafson and Tenderloin based and community embedded social practice ensemble, Skywatchers. Skywatchers began in 2011 in the tenant lounge of a Tenderloin SRO and has since grown into an ongoing conversation focused on the creation of new performance works emerging from an enduring collaboration between professional artists and formerly homeless resident artists of the neighborhood.
Facing the Subject: On Observation (25:00, HD video, 2016)
This video essay is a rumination on observation as an important condition of criticality-- to be used as we consider our social worlds and as we think about its representations. Originally published http://mediacommons.org/intransition/issue-3-1
(13:00 excerpt)
PORTRAIT OF TURNER (55:00, HD video, 2009)
Based on Shirley Clarke's influential experimental documentary film Portrait of Jason (1967), Portrait of Turner re-stages Clarke's experiment for a new actor and a new historical moment. This film animates questions of realism and authenticity in relation to identity but also in terms of a contemporary nonfiction practice.
(3:00 excerpt)
INCOMING MESSAGES (20:00 min. , HD video, 2008)
Crafted from answering machine cassettes collected at thrift stores between 2003 and 2005, Incoming Messages examines the analog answering machine at the end of its life. Once the most widely used sound recording device in the United States, the analog machine is now outmoded, uneasily coexisting with newer media and our seemingly endless desire for improvement.
SCREEN TEST NO. 3 (16mm, 4:00, 2001)
From a series, made with Julia Zay, that explores “casting,” “character,” and seriality as elemental features of identity.
Screen Test No. 3 reinterprets a 1957 filmed studio personality test for actress Tuesday Weld.
SCREEN TEST NO. 2 (16mm, 4:00, 2000)
From a series, made with Julia Zay, that explores “casting,” “character,” and seriality as elemental features of identity.
Screen Test No. 2 takes its cue from 1950s Hollywood melodrama.
SCREEN TEST NO. 1 (16mm, 4:00, 1999)
From a series, made with Julia Zay, that explores “casting,” “character,” and seriality as elemental features of identity.
Screen Test No. 1 is based on the young boy character “Joe” from the 1947 family melodrama, “Lassie Come Home”.