First Assignment
For First Assignment, I followed US servicewomen in training (The National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California), deployment (embedded as “media” with Forces in Afghanistan in 2008), and after their return home to Fort Hood, Texas (over Labor Day weekend 2009). Throughout the project’s trajectory I have created text, video, installation, and performance work (below). The project culminates in the long-form video-performance, First Assignment. www.first-assignment.com
We Are Mired In Clouds, 2010, video, 6:15min.
The Making of Americans, 2008-10, video, 2:30min.
From JBAD: Lessons Learned, book launch and performance presentation at The Velaslavasay Panorama Theater, August 2009.
From JBAD: Lessons Learned, Les Figues Press, 2009, spiral-bound, 80pages, ed. of 100
From JBAD, Lessons Learned takes its design from the US Army and Marine Corp’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual and is comprised entirely of field notes and direct quotation from my time as a “media embed” with US Forces stationed in Afghanistan. In order to gain approval to “embed” as a journalist, the experimental literary press Les Figues Press acted as my news agency and published the artist book of my findings. Organized alphabetically around terminology I encountered during my embed and, subsequent, associated meanings, the book has also acted as a script in conjunction with video performances I have given since my return. [LISTEN TO EXCERPT FROM From JBAD: Lessons Learned, 4:20min]
Knees and Votes, repeated performance, 2008, 7min.
The Space Between Presidents, performance part of The Washington Boulevard Concert, November 2009.
Coverlands, 2009, installation, Workspace Gallery, Los Angeles.
What Does WAR Stand For?, 2008, text piece for GLARE Quarterly.