Artists Television Access is an artist run experimental space in San Francisco that’s been around since the early 80’s. I’m so happy this organization still exists in the ever gentrifying Mission district. Kevin Friedrichsen and I performed in the windows for their series called Almost Public/Semi-Exposed. In a multidisciplinary communication experiment, I constructed and deconstructed various lenses to view and be viewed, while Kevin composed modular synth loops. This was a live conversation of body & material and technology & sound.

Photographer Ben Jackson took footage of the performance, I created a video edit, and Kevin layered sound. The text comes from an essay by Stuart Hall, which explores the relationship between the viewer and viewed. He also points to the ways in which our “seeing” can be understood as a complex interplay between many things, rather than something externally fixed. For example, the unconscious, the apparatus or medium of an image, institutional context that it is seen, and the meaning associated with the figure or body itself- all impact the way we come to understand meaning.

The hope is to recognize our lenses of perspective are more subjective than we often believe.

More information and images can be found on the Installation Performance tab.

Performers: Alexa Eisner, Kevin Friedrichsen

Cinematographer: Ben Jackson

Editor: Alexa Eisner

Sound Designer: Kevin Friedrichsen

Words By: Stuart Hall