site specific projection piece
1994
This piece was projected at The New Century Theater, a strip club in San Francisco where the piece’s imagery was shot. It consisted of titles of historical and contemporary works of art, and video still images of strippers performing. The titles were first projected one at a time, and then the images one at time. While the piece was happening, everyone inside of the club were also framed as part of the piece. With the help of the club’s staff, Clark snuck an art going audience into the theater including her professors and classmates from graduate school whom she had invited for her mid-term review. All of the club’s seats faced a large projection movie screen. This hung behind the only stage with a long runway that jutted out into the audience. First a dancer performed her usual set of 3 songs while lap dances and other usual club business ensued. Then when the dancer’s set was complete, instead of announcing the next dancer the DJ announced and played Clark’s piece on the large screen, visible to everyone. It screened for the unsuspecting ‘strip club going’ audience, and the club’s staff including dancers (some whose images were in the piece), as well as the ‘art going’ audience. The piece was projected without the permission of, and unbeknownst to, the management who were downstairs, putting her own job at risk as Clark also worked at the theater.
When Clark had been editing the footage, she became interested in the still images and photographed them off of the monitor, later realizing they resembled works in the art history cannon.
“…an aesthetic of risk runs high throughout Clarkâs oeuvre…”
—Jillian St. Jacques, Afterimage, The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Vol. 44 #4
