LAN Party or “National Take Your Daughter to Work Day

In LAN Party or “National Take Your Daughter to Work Day” Noelle Mason grafts autobiographical narrative onto appropriated images, objects, and contexts in an attempt to negotiate the complexities of power, which reverberate between the interpersonal and institutional.  The resulting installation, or local area network (LAN,) implicates the viewer in an act of violence and uses the gallery as a medium to examine the historical precedence that affirms the authority of viewership.  In LAN Party a Remington M700 police sniper rifle is poised atop a domestic looking table.  A stool and headphone set invite the viewer to position herself behind the rifle, aimed at a small ornately framed monitor across the room.  The monitor which, can only be seen and heard when standing in close proximity, shows found footage taken through the lens of an American helicopter sniper as he targets and kills Iraqis on the ground.  The video is accompanied by a telephone recording of Ms. Mason’s father’s voice coolly describing the formal qualities of his own experience with the Remington M700 (weight, material, kickback.)  Outfitted with headphones and enabled by the magnifying powers of the rifle’s scope, the viewer across the room receives the sniper footage in concert with the original soundtrack—the voices of gunmen and the booming sound of shots being fired.

Still from Intimate Distance / Adulterer, a performance and video performed in Marfa, Texas during the Chinati Foundation's Open House weekend, October 2008.

The performance was documented and combined with additional footage for the video short. Intimate Distance/ Adulterer honestly admits to the ethical failures that are part of being human. Prince describes the unguarded pleasure of an affair and the painful destruction of her marriage without allowing for an easy moral solution.

“I have never heard of anything so raw in my life. I really respect your honesty…
You are an intense person and you seem to have no fear.  I know you must but you really put yourself out there.”
Sara Simon Behrnes

The emotional fearlessness in the work mostly consists of a willingness to look bad while speaking the truth as I know it. Confidence is important to the work and mostly in relation to the deeply sensitive voice I am employing despite the fact that it’s the last thing in the world I want to expose. It may also be the trajectory towards the things I’m most afraid of that makes the work compelling. That makes it very human. The videos have shown or will show in art galleries and festivals in Milan, Istanbul, San Francisco, Austin and (consistently) on my website.

Intimate Distance / Adulterer may be seen under portfolio one, fifth miniature square at www.deniseprince.com.

Pipecleaner, 2007

“3D-Pipes,” a kitschy late-90s Microsoft screensaver is the lo-fi setting for a quirky post-feminist intervention. Wearing a dress made out of cleaning gloves, a pole dancer invades the screensaver’s maze of pipes. Her spins, gyrations, and efforts to climb and clean the pipes become absurd when reduced to byte-sized edits that mimic the original screensaver’s recombinant logic.

honeysuckle

Gathered beech leaves,

sewn together like faire wings,

celebrate the sweet nectar of life.

At the end of winter, these golden leaves are the first glimmer of the new cycle to come;

the last shimmers still clinging to their branches in the now bare forest.

Each leaf was collected individually from a stand of beech trees,

after first asking each tree to shed itself to become apart of this gown,

as I shed myself

to enter their glowing, honey-colored world.

father bear & mother bear inside 'the three bears' house'

As a child I identified with certain storybook characters,
I’d imagine being in their place, living my life through theirs somehow.
On hearing “The Three Bears” story,
I identified with the bears and wanted to live in their home,
and be apart of their family.

‘the three bears’ house’ is a pink quilted yurt-like structure
with a spacious circular interior similar to a hollowed out tree.
‘the three bears’ house’ is created by hand as if by ‘the mother bear’ herself,
knitting, crocheting, weaving and sewing found materials together to build her home.

“The Three Bears” are defined by their domestic space.
The mother bear created the setting and the props for the story.
She is the sculptor, creating a magical space for her family.
Everything inside the three bears’ house has been custom-made for them;
every piece is “just right” for that character, in a sense, autobiographical to each bear.

So I have become the mother bear,
and set about building her home as she would.
I am not replicating a real house, I have sculpted their house…
the way I see it through her eyes.
Their home is a self-portrait, everything is being customized for these bears.

Performance at KOKAY (which means fireflies in mayan language) at a place called Xpu Ha Jungle

Monstrous Feminine in Mexico is a performance that took place in Mexico in June 2009, at the Coba Mayan jungle ruins and in Kokay (which means “fireflies” in Mayan language) in place called the Xpu Ha Jungle. I created a hand sewn, hand-dyed costume using WWII fabric straps/bandages and gold and silver chains, as a way of blending with the natural environment.

Monstrous Feminine in Mexico

Part of the performance was directly inspired by the paintings of Henri Rousseau–”The Snake Charmer” and “The Dream.” At the time that I traveled Mexico, I was reading “The Hopi Survival Kit,” which, it turned out, specifically addresses Nostradamus’s prophecies, the end of the Mayan calendar, and Mother Nature’s impending cataclysmic reclamation of herself. Coincidentally, the man who offered the use of his jungle land for my performance was also named Nostradamus.

Monstrous Feminine in Mexico

Monstrous Feminine in Mexico

To see more of my work on the Losing yourself site, click here.

Janet Wright with "Free Evaluations" sign

In “evaluTEC,” Janet Wright, a character representing evaluTEC, a self-help company based on the concept of self-evaluation for self-betterment, sits at a roadside stand waiting for interaction. She connects with passersby by first offering them a complimentary self-evaluation to help them through times of change. Then, she asks the participant to fill out an evaluation of herself because she’s currently being evaluated by an on-looking camera.

This piece also features a website, evaluTEC.com, which allows for another less-personal and more frustrating avenue of interaction. The personal interaction and the virtual one serve as foils of one another, and help add depth to this examination of people struggling to gain control of their lives, and the hurdles then encounter in their seemingly futile struggle.

With the evaluTEC project, I address the shared experiences of evaluation and success. Through the use of live interactions and the evaluTEC.com website, I examine how we quantify, measure, and compare ourselves. The project brings to focus an absurd and dehumanizing quality, which arises when applying an objective evaluation to the subjective idea of human success.

The idea of human success is one riddled with subconscious fears and insecurity, in part due to its subjective and unquantifiable nature. Because most humans have had the experience of striving for an intangible sense of success, and suffered being evaluated along the way, an empathy can easily be generated by sharing the these experiences with others. By cultivating this empathy, a sense of connection and community is instantly created. Within a continuously more isolated world, these moments of connection are valuable in altering mindsets and cultivating critical thought.

Janet Wright planting sign

Waiting for passersby

An evaluTEC business card?

Perfomrance with studio-based drawing, Woods (Rabun, Georiga), 2009

This  image captures a performance enacted with studio-based drawing, Woods (Rabun, GA) 2009.  The drawing itself  is an energetic impression of the woods of Rabun, Georgia, a depiction of how my body remembers a site. When in the woods, I often perform private intimate rituals of embedding my body within the landscape to deepen my physical and sensory connection to the land.  My intellect is quieted and my  body enters into a silent conversation with the cycles and rhythms of nature.

The act of inserting the body into urban studio-based work recalls the act of  merging body with organic landscape yet reflects the urban environment and mediated experience.  Markings on my body are made with similar manufactured and industrial materials that were also used in the making of the drawing.  The body is a bridge that links studio practice with practices in the remote woods of northern Georgia and accentuates the distinct and different energies of organic and urban environments.

You are cordially invited to tea time (Courtesy of The Suz), 2008

The merging of all three “Suz”, Sue, Su, and Sioux (representative of three alter-egos symptomatic of the polarizing impacts of race and identity politics) into a single entity is an attempt to re-define the self, using tactics familiar to how commercial and corporate industries re- brand themselves or form a new authentic identity. The Suz, in the guise of a faux real company and brand, fabricates familiar spaces or constructs to address the notions of authenticity, identity, and perceptions. You are cordially invited to tea time was the faux real collective’s first attempt to create the time for a participatory space and experience for the artist and viewer to interact and partake in an activity that lends itself to a critical dialogue of their immediate surroundings. The installation included an octagonal platform with custom made floor cushions, tea menus, and a tea set on a serving tray (all branded with The Suz logo) that was designed and constructed specifically to host a party of four for tea in the gallery. Throughout the course of the evening everyone was invited to tea time, as a hired employee (me disguised in a blonde wig) served tea to those who willingly decided to sit on top and participate.

**You can see a short video of the installation/performance captured live by wetheat project on the evening of the opening at this link: http://wetheat.tv/WHtvChannel2.html (go to the menu to the left and scroll down to Lee-Chun)**

Detail of ‘Childhood ‘memory station’ in Secret Museum of Mankind Installation

This piece was part of the installation Secret Museum Of Mankind where I created my own Natural History Museum, which included different ‘memory stations’: that represented my genetic past, childhood and future.

(Below) This mural is based off a original photograph obtained by my father during his service in the Bolivian Army in 1967. The characters in the piece are Che Guevara and his gang in the Bolivian jungles during their attempt to revolutionilize Bolivia. I used my father’s clothing and towels as materials.

Donna Huanca, Cuban Rebels, 1967 (Last Supper) 2007, 9’ x 12' Father’s Clothing on Canvas, Faux Cocaine

The Future Diorama was composed of all of the galleries pedestals and natural elements such as plants, dirt, bones, toilet paper.