… including Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, Cliff Hengst, Fred Rinne, Gabrielle Thormann, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough, and Steve Thurston. Check the website for special screening events in conjunction with the show.

DONATE

You can make a fully tax deductible donation toward the production and exhibition of the VöLVA SAGA series through my fiscal sponsor, CIRCUIT NETWORK based in San Francisco.
All donations will receive and official document of receipt from Circuit Network for your tax purposes.

To donate by check please make it payable to Circuit Network and make sure it has my name Monet Clark, in the “for” section. Then send to: Circuit Network 599 Alabama St. Suite 203 San Francisco, CA 94110

To donate with a credit card please use Pay Pal and click the send money tab, then enter the email info@circuitnetwork.com in the to section. Please be sure to add my name, Monet Clark, to the notes section.

For more information on CIRCUIT NETWORK please refer to their website https://www.circuitnetwork.com/  Or you can call or email CIRCUIT’s co-director Elisabeth Beaird for more information: info@circuitnetwork.com or 415 863-2441 If you want to see a PDF of their 501c3 letter of determination and EIN number let me know I have it and can send you a copy, and of course you can look them up on Guidestar through the IRS website and confirm that their charitable status is current. 

To make a donation to me directly and/or purchase an artwork you can see my works here and contact me on the contact tab.

For all donations let us know if you would like us to acknowledge your gift in the special thanks section of the works! THANK YOU!

3 works in progress from the VöLVA SAGA series

ORACULAR

GAIA GANGSTER GIRL and the ECO-WARRIORS of WONDERLAND

and WITCH

Eco-feminist performance based video and photographic works
Written and performed, shot and directed by Monet Clark

From Wikipedia: “The Völva were female shamans and seers in Norse religion… who traveled the land… and were summoned in times of crisis… They were held in the highest esteem and had immense authority… Scandinavian archaeologists have discovered wands in about 40 female graves with valuable offerings showing that the Völva belonged to the highest levels of society… In Old Norse, Völva means “carrier of a magic staff… Their practices included meditation, introspection, drumming, divination, sorcery and prophecy and other forms of indigenous magic… The Völva were known for their art of seduction, which was one of the reasons they were considered dangerous… The Völva were not considered to be harmless… The weapon of the Völva was the wand…”

ORACULAR 
This is a 5-character performance video project that delivers timely oracular messages to its audience. With at least 15 different endings, the piece has an actual divination element, as messages that individual audience members receive will be dependent on what day they see the work, and there are no coincidences in ORACULAR.

It has 3 wryly-humorous main characters: Oracle, Healer and Mother and two supporting anchoring Meditator characters. All float in the air in Yogic 1⁄2 Lotus position for the whole piece, and have an animal familiar. All are superhero-like fashionistas, with over-the-top costuming and stiletto shoes, designer gowns, and multi-colored wigs, elaborate headpieces, accessories and props that each pay homage to an unusual combination of specifically chosen cultures with commonalities in world views and traditional valuations often differing from the mainstream western model. They emphasize the potency of stillness, within the additional narrative elements within their coordinated slow moving backgrounds, shot in nature from a pollinator’s perspective.  The characters begin in black and white and fade up into color one object and body part at a time, a metaphor for the strengthening of the qualities that they each possess. 

Small still images of the characters in their backdrops will be available with the various oracular messages for people to buy inexpensively, reminding them of their important affirmations, and large fine art versions for collectors. These are meant to help us shift mainstream western perceptions and biases, to inspire beliefs that are respectful of our environment, of women, global indigenous perspectives, the intuitive mind, the interdependent web of all of life, and be funny, encouraging, and more. 

The final form of the work is dependent on the pandemic and the venue, but its likely to be projected as a single channel work projected outdoors once a day for a month, where people can gather safely and attend from their cars in a venue like Fort Mason Flix. 

THE CHARACTERS
Oracle is placed in the middle, wearing an absurdly large crystal point around her neck akin to a 1980s rap star’s huge bling necklaces (this instead is hippy bling); it knocks around impractically as she moves. She is dressed in a silver low cut gown, with red ruby bejeweled glam rock couture platform stilettos with silver stripes. Her hair is lavender, lipstick purple, and her headpieces and accessories reference Himalayan and Norse Völva cultures. 

To her left is Healer who wears a plunging v-neck sexy tulle black gown. Her straight long yellow hair in Princess Leia/Hopi hairstyle. She wears Navajo turquoise jewelry, turquoise lipstick, and an indigenous Scandinavian Sami reindeer pouch with medicinal objects inside and a matching felt hat with massive Reindeer antlers. She wears a shaman’s fringe veil, common to Shamans of different cultures globally, assisting them to see in two worlds. She plays a Scandinavian shaman’s drum, and has huge ceramic Amanita muscaria (red and white magic mushrooms) and acts very funnily altered. She is the most unpredictable of the characters and dramatic.

To the right of Oracle is Mother who wears an elaborate bejeweled cape gown, which is nude mesh with medium orange colored embellishments. Her hair is the texture of Polynesian hair, but pink. She wears a Hawaiian floral headpiece, lei, and arm and wrist birth to the islands, and traditional white Hawaiian dress and offerings. She wears Ndebele South African gold choker and cuffs, which match her oversized platform gold stilettos. 

Two meditator characters dressing in similar black attire, bondage shoes and pink hair will meditate only and open the piece. 

The final form of the work is dependent on the pandemic and the venue, but its likely to be projected as a single channel work projected outdoors once a day for a month, where people can gather safely and attend from their cars in a venue like Fort Mason Flix.  

VöLVA SAGA IDEOLOGY
This series questions aversions within critical discourse and feminism to subjects such as mysticism, spirituality, healing, natural medicine and mothering. It confronts internalized misogyny, by asking us to examine our bias towards the mystic and non-linear and intuitive methods for data collecting, and emotions, the subconscious mind, nurturing, yielding, softness, the energetic and invisible world, the internal and stillness. It ponders the cultural tendency to dismiss and ridicule these attributes. It points out that their opposite attributes are exulted including linear, logical and rational thought, detachment, the conscious mind, conquering, destruction, force, hardness, the physical and visible world, the external, and the fast paced. It references Chinese Taoism, which considers the former listed qualities as Yin Feminine along with coolness and water, and the latter list as Yang masculine along with heat and fire.

VöLVA SAGA explores the cultural tendency to tether Yin qualities to women and then devalue them. It sees all genders as having the potential for Yin as well as Yang qualities within them and this has been the case historically as well.

VöLVA SAGA’s theory draws parallels between the Taoist perspective, contemporary holistic theory, global indigenism, and climate change science. It concludes that the imbalanced western cultural tendency to exult hot Yang behaviors over Yin cooling ones has led to the rampant exploitation of our natural environment which in turn has resulted in our imbalanced biosphere on fire. I write this now on evacuation standby, with California burning north and south.

The Völva Saga series suggests that it is of vital urgency that we begin to validate and value the cooling Yin attributes in others and cultivate them within ourselves. The series calls upon the qualities of the Völva to heal our biosphere in crises.

For these works I draw from my mixed race heritage and the multi-cultural spiritual melting pot of Los Angeles and the marginalized ‘back-to-the-land’ subcultures, in which I was raised. It references my formal education in Holistic Theory, Women’s Studies and Art. It draws from my 28 years of intensive training in holistic, natural and spiritual healing methodologies recovering from a neuro-immune disability caused by toxic environmental contamination left over from gold rush era mining.

Other VÖLVA SAGA works in progress
GAIA GANGSTER GIRL and the ECO-WARRIORS of WONDERLAND
A performance video experimental narrative short film, and series of performance based photographs. 
A Latina gangster girl from Los Angeles goes on the run, finds herself, literally and figuratively, in the woods of northern California. She chases a white rabbit down the a rabbit hole finding herself in a ceremonial scene of animal human hybrids. She is this taken by animal women hybrid characters amongst damaged landscapes, post gold rush era mining and clear-cut logging, and exposed to the eccentric back-to-the-land sub-cultural characters of the region takes psychedelics and experiences an expansion of consciousness, and transforms into a an eco-warrior and protector of trees 

WITCH
A Single channel performance video portrait is displayed looped, on a large flat screen monitor hung vertical and performance based photographs with text. The work utilizes cliché archetypical witch costume elements, including a high fashion black gown off shoulder with a high slit, a push up bra (a’ la Elvira), pointed boots and hat and goth make-up. In it I will stir a big cauldron and recite simple truthful lines. Photographs will be approximately 30×40 in size with text from a chosen set of the lines from the piece.

 DONATE
We have already raised over 1/7 of our proposed $100,000. budget for the costuming, shooting, editing, assemblage and installation of these 3 works. I can provide an itemized budget upon request. You can make a fully tax deductible donation of any amount small or large toward the production and exhibition of the VöLVA SAGA series through CIRCUIT NETWORK. All donations will receive an official document of receipt from Circuit Network for your tax purposes. Any contribution towards this goal is helpful and is greatly appreciated.

For more information on CIRCUIT NETWORK see their website, and/or call or email their co-director Elisabeth Beaird. You can also look them up on Guidestar through the IRS website and confirm that their charitable status is current and if you would like to see a PDF of their 501c3 letter of determination and EIN number let me know and I will send you a copy.

Circuit Network
address: Circuit Network 499 Alabama St. Suite 203 San Francisco, CA 94110
website https://www.circuitnetwork.com/ 
email: info@circuitnetwork.com
phone: (415) 863-2441
Monet Clark’s email: monetclarkvideo@gmail.com

To donate by check, please make it payable to Circuit Network and make sure you write VöLVA SAGA series, in the “for” section and send to the above address. To donate with a credit card: please use PayPal and click the send money tab, then enter the email info@circuitnetwork.com in the “to” section. Please be sure VöLVA SAGA series in the “notes” section.

For all donations please let us know if you would like acknowledgement in the special thanks section of the works.

THANK YOU!

Previous Works:
NOW, A Video Art Ritual 
completed and exhibited at SF Camerawork, in 2018
A 10-screen performance/video installation and audience participatory ritual

NOW, A Video Art Ritual poster and 2 installations shots at SF Camerawork 2018