Now: A Video Art Rituals
John Sanborn and Monet Clark
Exhibition Dates: February 8 - April 7, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 8, 2018

PRESS RELEASE
SF Arts Monthly, "March Highlights From Dance to Galleries, " Vol26. No. 12
 

This multi-screen, audience participatory performance | video installation will premiere at SF Camerawork before traveling to venues in the US and abroad. 

“NOW” is guided by two hilarious opposing (s)heros: the sarcastic rage filled, haute goth Catharsis and the vamp, valkyrie yogini Perspicacious. Within 10 screens, including a projection on water, they explore the nexus between technology and ritual by inviting their audience’s participation, guiding them through a personal process. These contrasting protagonists cast a mystical space in an urban gallery, and wittily survey contemporary and historical pitfalls, while bringing the audience into the present now moment. “NOW” examines cultural appropriation and evolution; global warming; punk rock ideology; and spiritual philosophy. It reveals an emerging scientifically based, melting pot mysticism, and promotes the individual-micro/global-macro connection where “you matter now.”

Learn more about "NOW: A Video Art Ritual" here

ARTISTS

John Sanborn is an award-winning media artist whose work has been shown and broadcast in museums across the world, including the Whitney Museum, MOMA, El Prado; the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, and the Seibu Museum. Recently, Sanborn was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of France. He has created broadcast work for PBS (“Alive TV”, “Great Performances” and “Sesame Street”), and Comedy Central (“Frank Leaves for the Orient”). His feature length media works have played at major international festivals including the Tribeca, Sundance, Mill Valley, Rotterdam, New York and London film festivals. He was an artist-in-residence at the celebrated TV Lab at WNET/13 and received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He brings a curiosity and virtuosity to this collaboration.

Monet Clark is a performance and video artist. She received her BFA from SFAI. She minored in Holistic Heath at SFSU’s pioneering department and has trained in mind/body medicine, vibrational healing, and plant based medicines. Clark has been exhibiting her performance/video works internationally for 25 years, including with SFMOMA’s Now Playing Series; The Kitchen, NYC; Chicago’s International performance Art Festival; RETHinkART Digital Festival in Rethymno, Greece; AVIFF Art Film Festival Cannes, France; Bideodromo in Bibao, Spain; and more. Clark's script for NOW crosses her feminist performance/video practice with her lifelong study of natural healing disciplines and mysticism, with an intention to confront the latter subject’s taboo status within intellectual circles. Clark is interested in an intersectional feminist discourse that explores these taboos as symptoms of misogyny and racism, and as symptomatic of the suppression of non-essentialist feminine principals, potentially existent in all genders.

Below is the final mock up of the 10 channel installation work- - 6 monitors in a circle surrounding a pool of water with video projection, flanked by 2 projections of the characters Catharsis and Perspicacious, with a projected landscape of transformation between them.

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