The Mythic Being (1973; 00:08:00): an excerpted segment from a film, Other Than Art's Sake by the Australian artist Peter Kennedy, this is a hilarious documentation and interview by Peter on my Mythic Being street performances. It shows me getting into and out of drag, rehearsing my mantra, and roaming the streets muttering it, followed by crowds of curious onlookers who are attracted by Peter's film equipment and technicians.
Other Than Art's Sake also includes work by and interviews with Ian Breakwell, Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven, Hans Haacke, David Medalla, Charles Simonds, and Stephen Willats. For more information, contact Peter Kennedy/ 14 Stanley St., Richmond/ Melbourne, Victoria 3121/ Australia; telephone (61-3)429-4747, fax (61-3)428-6048 from 7:30 AM to 11 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Funk Lessons (1983; 00:15:17): a videotape piece based on an audience-interactive performance of Funk Lessons at the University of California, Berkeley that goes considerably beyond the performance. Both performance and tape address the ambiguous status of African-American working class music and dance as serious contributors to American art and culture. In the performance I teach my audience how to listen to this music and how to dance to it. There's a lot of audience response in this tape, which is humorous and also moving. Edited and directed by Sam Samore, produced by Tom Oden. For a more recent, international approach to the same material, I highly recommend the stately but endearing Finnish/German/ Russian treatment at http://folk.uio.no/tsandvik/fun/learn_disco.mpg

My Calling (Card) #1 Meta-Performance (1987-88; 00:58:00): documentary footage edited together from two audience-participatory meta-performances, the first with an all-white audience, the second with a mixed but predominantly black audience. I call them meta-performances because in them I invite a larger audience into self-reflective participatory critique of a one-on-one interpersonal performance for which I present documentation. In this case, the one-on-one performance was of My Calling (Card) #1. The first meta-performance, at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago in 1987, took that performance as the object of critique. The second meta-performance, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, took the Randolph Street Gallery meta-performance as the object of critique. In that performance I suggest that whoever watches the tape edited from these two meta-performances will be participating in a third level of self-conscious meta-performance, taking the combined tape itself as the object of critique. The level of audience engagement in both venues was very high and the discussion quite heated. Interesting dynamics developed between black and white participants in the Studio Museum venue.

Funk Lessons Meta-Performance (1987; 00:42:00): a re-edited documentary of a meta-performance at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago that discusses the motivational, cultural and situational origins of Funk Lessons, and analyzes the structure of the performance. Dialogue with the all-white audience is extensive, very intense and occasionally humorous.

I am deeply indebted to Peter Kennedy, Sam Samore, Tom Oden, The Randolph Street Gallery, and The Studio Museum in Harlem for capturing some of my early performance work on videotape at a time when I did not have the resources to do so myself.

Merge (1988, LED Billboard; 00:0:56, endless loop): a short animation on the Times Square lightboard, a meditation on miscegenation, procreation and self-transcendence using PacMan cartoon imagery.

Please, God (1990; 00:61:00 endless loop): a durational, three-part endless loop videotape combining footage of a group of eight- or nine-year-old black girls joyfully dancing for the camera in front of a window, a repeating text that moves slowly across the top of the screen and expresses apprehension about the treatment they will encounter as adults, and a music soundtrack consisting in three repeating Billie Holiday songs, "God Bless the Child," "Stormy Blues," and "Strange Fruit."

Art Talk: Xenophobia and the Indexical Present (1993; 01:22:00): a talk about my art work from 1968 to 1988 at Seminole Community College in Florida. I try to show, through discussion of my own work, how art can function in resisting or transforming the xenophobic response that is cognitively inherent in everyone. This talk ends rather suddenly, but contains a lot of jokes. It may be of interest to institutions in the United States at which I have had to decline invitations to speak, because of my status as a Suspicious Traveler on the U. S. Transportation Security Administration’s Watch List.

You/Stop/Watch: A Shiva Japam (August 2002; 00:42:26): A real-time endurance piece about endurance. Formally referencing the CNN talking head + multiple texts video format, this work is structured by the yogic practice of japam, the continued repetition of a mantra that restructures the neurological pathways of the brain in preparation for the experience of death. This japam is dedicated to Shiva, the outsider, the dancer, the yogic ascetic, the destroyer of illusion and so finally the messenger of truth. The soundtrack is Raga Malkaus, played by Prof. Roy Choudhury (Nataraj Music, Düsseldorf).

Shiva Dances with the Art Institute of Chicago (October 2004; 01:43:18): Structured by a Fall 2003 lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago that transformed into a spontaneous and moving group performance, I situate Funk Lessons first in the evolving tradition of recent mainstream films that highlight the teaching of popular dance as a medium of self-transcendence and cross-cultural contact; and second within the broader philosophical context of The Color Wheel Series, which this video completes.

Video components of multimedia installations are available for rental only in the context of the complete installation.