Murder as Phenomena is not a show of dead, fetishized, and sensationalized bodies. Rather, it manifests the traces of murder---often unseen or unrecognized, always deeply felt. East of Eden: Murder as Phenomena---the Fall 1992 issue of Camerawork--will broaden the discourses of the exhibition to include political, philosophical, and historical interpretations of its subject. Panels, lectures, and performances have been programmed through October and November to provide further forums for discussion and interaction.
Rupert Jenkins, Curator
Exhibition Artists:
Harlan Wallach
Theory Girls
Deborah Small, Elizabeth Sisco, Carla Kirkwood, Scott Kessler, & Louis Hock
Cynde Schauper
Steve Murakishi
Suzanne Lacy & Leslie Labowitz
Peter Kowaleszyn
Ann Holcomb
Leslie Ernst, Cathy Greenblatt, & Susan McWhinney
Janet Dodson
Lucinda Devlin
Surveillance installation by Nick Bertoni
Sound installation by Latex Chipmunk
Events:
Visions of Murderous Desire
Film and Video
An evening of films that explore the visual dynamics of murder in cinema. These films examine and represent the fascination that murder consistently holds for classical Hollywood and non-narrative cinema alike. Each explores that confluence of vision, violence, and sexuality in the body of the image in radically different styles, traditions, and histories of filmmaking.
Peeping Tom by Michael Powell (1960). 103 mins.
Kali Film: I Spit On Your Grave by Birgit and Wilhelm Hein (1987). 75 mins.
Introduced by Cathy Greenblatt; Co-sponsored with SF Cinematheque
Harlan Wallach, Peter Kowaleszyn, Lucinda Devlin
Artist Presentations
This presentation brings together three of the Murder as Phenomena exhibiting artists. Harlan Wallach is based in Chicago. His Chicago Murder Sites series consists of pin-hole images with text that document the locations of the 922 murders reported in Chicago in 1992. Peter Kowaleszyn is a San Francisco artist whose mixed media installation Shroud is about serial killer Ted Bundy and the structures of power within the male domain. The Omega Suites by Lucinda Devlin are chilling color documents of death chambers. Pictured are gas and lethal injection chambers, gallows, and electric chairs from every state except Florida and California. Collectively these artists prompt disturbing insights into the state of our society, and the ethics and moralities that drive our culture.
Moderated by Rupert Jenkins
Rhodessa Jones
Performance
Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women is a series of monologues based on the lives and times of real women who are incarcerated behind bars. A solo performance created and performed by Rhodessa Jones, with direction and music by Idris Ackamoor, Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women utilizes theatre, movement, and song to anchor the words born out of the silence that is so integral to waiting.
Co-sponsored with The Lab. Presented in conjunction with Feminism, Activism, and Art.
Suzanne Lacy/Jane Caputi
Lectures and Book Signings
In 1977, in response to the sensationalized media coverage of the Los Angeles "Hillside Stangler" murders, performance activists Suzannne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz organized In Mourning and In Rage, a series of public events that are documented in Murder as Phenomena. Lacy continues to be a committed activist whose works interface art with "real life." She is a writer and video artist, and has been Dean of the School of Fine Arts, CCAC, since 1987.
Jane Caputi is the author of The Age of Sex Crime, a definitive study of mass media, gynocidal representations of women. Her work aims to realign public awareness of paternalistic terrorism, and addresses possible solutions to combat media-induced hate-crimes against women. Caputi teaches in the American Studies Dept. at the University of New Mexico. She is completing a new book entitled Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: Female Power at the End of the Earth, and is a contributor to the Fall/Winter '92 issue of Camerawork.
Theory Girls/Carla Kirkwood
Performances
The Theory Girls (Laura Brun and Jennie Currie) are multi-media performance aritsts who specialize in "feminist interrogations of pop culture phenomena." Tonight's performance, Like the Heroine in a Country and Western Song investigates the case of "Florida lesbian highway killer" Aileen Wuornos---a prostitute convicted of murdering her "johns"---as told by Arlene Pratt, a born again-Christian woman who has become her unofficial spokeswoman. Special guest performers Sheree Rose and Margaret Crane portray Wuornos and Pratt.
Many Women Involved by Carla Kirkwood is one component of the San Diego NHI project. Her performance traces the biography of a woman through her growing feminist consciousness. A recurring motif in the text is "somebody is getting away with murder" and the names of the 45 women murdered in San Diego county since 1985 and associated with the police term "NHI"---no humans involved.
Co-sponsored with The Lab. Presented in conjunction with Feminism, Activism, and Art.