CollaborativePerformance

Shelter In Place, 2004, 2-Hour Performance at New Langton Arts, San Francisco

We contracted with a professional Dominatrix (Mistress Morgana) to ‘mummify’ us, as the audience and three surveillance cameras watched on. Following the advice of the United States Government, we used Saran Wrap and Duct Tape to “Shelter In Place”. The final step of the process consisted of holes being cut in the Saran Wrap to reveal our genital areas. Crumpled up paper had been inserted to protect the skin from scissor injury. Instead of newspaper, which is typically used, the protective pages were copies of the United States Constitution.

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Porta-Peephole, 2007, 3-Hour Performance at Queens Nails Annex, San Francisco, CA

We created a portable wall and conducted surveillance through the holes we drilled into it. We “peeped” at people inside the gallery, up and down Mission Street and at the Argus Lounge next door. We installed a CCTV surveillance system throughout the gallery and monitored the feed as well as drilling a hole through the wall of Queens Nails INTO the bar. We took video footage through the hole, with a snake video camera, which taped people playing pool in the bar. Footage of us “peeping on the bar was live-fed to a TV above the bar, revealing our spying to the bar patrons.

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FLANK, 2004, 3-Hour Performance at The Luggage Store show “Spoonful of Sugar”, San Francisco, CA

We "worked as security" for the show, keeping viewers at a distance & protecting the art, as well as controlling their movements around the crowded gallery space with our barriers. With spy cameras embedded in our helmets, we transmitted live-feed footage of the crowd to monitors in the gallery.

Surveillance Portraiture, 2005-06, 1-Month Performance at Mission 17, San Francisco, CA

We created a faux company called Surveillance Portraiture, Inc.

We set up our business office in the gallery and conducted “image harvesting” sessions from our CCTV surveillance system. The surveillance footage was then used to create individual “portraits” for sale. We also surveilled ourselves in the office and on “undercover outings” (wearing wigs and costumes).

Alpha Bravo Charlie, 2007, 3-Hour Performance with Pam Martin for Close Calls, Headlands Center for the Arts.

We transformed an ordinary Toyota family van into an SUV (SURVEILLANCE UTILITY VEHICLE) in order to conduct observation missions from parked locations at night. The primary feature of the SUV was the CCTV monitor system embedded in the side view mirrors. These monitors transmitted through live-feed, the surveillance operations occurring inside of the vehicle.

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Domesticate, 2009, 20-minute performance with Pam Martin performed at Slaughterhouse Gallery and Winery, Healdsburg, CA

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The collaborative work made with Pam Martin from 2002 through 2009, explores the complexity and instability of power relationships. We were interested in the privileged eye, private property and public space. While examining our own ambivalence and complicity, we investigated visuality and the expanding/contracting landscape of “self” within structures of control. Our collaboration addressed personal repression and compliant behaviors through mutual acts of confrontation and in questioning the official discourses regarding normalcy, explored the exposure of personal and collective fear and desire.

LINDA FORD