TRANSMISSION
Updated: 5 days ago
TRANSMISSION was a two year, site-specific exploration of the idea that we (humans) have the capacity to enter into information streams in order to create a shape experiences that are powerful and new.
At the heart of TRANSMISSION are three core images, GLITCH, UPRISING, BRAMBLE, all of which are still images taken from video recordings. I often use "freeze frames" from video as a starting off point creating new work. The act of reusing/reframing imagery speaks to the alchemical process or art making itself and is models the ways we can tap into our creativity and vision to effect change.
GLITCH was the first image that inspired TRANSMISSION. A screenshot image taken from a video I made in 1999 while recording late night TV with my Sony camcorder. The image itself is beautiful, mesmerizing; horizontal bands of electric color pulse and bleed across the frame — chaotic yet patterned, uncontrolled yet luminous.
But when I look at this image, all I can think about is how crazy amazing it is that something so mesmerizing is an unintended glitch caused by a breakdown in signal. I started to wonder if there other worlds of powerful chaotic beauty that we can access when signals breakdown?
UPRISING was made the morning after the 2024 presidential election. I went into my backyard, into a field of wild weeds and grass, and I danced to Fight the Power by Public Enemy.
I took one screenshot of the video of me with my hands rising up to the sky and placed it on top of the image of SIGNAL. In the composite image, my black and white body rises from that field and into a cosmic forcefield — nature and technology colliding, light and dark refusing to be separated. It is a gesture beyond logic and reason. It is primal and unrestrained.
The third, BRAMBLE, is a close crop still image of a video recording of my dance wtih the vines and trees on the edge of the woods that line our backyard. Entering the dark wet bramble just on the edge of the woods, massive vines clutched my torso, grasping, wrapping, enclosing, unfolding - an embrace of terrorizing delight.
Using these three images as my starting off point, I continued to work over a series of two years to make the larger body of work that became TRANSMISSION.
In September of 2026, I shared the work as part of our Artistwives Collective Open Studios. You can view photos of the installation here.
