Religion/Spirituality

This tape addresses spiritual closure. Video gave me a chance to examine, see, and celebrate the seven spiritual venues, paths, and journeys that I have made: 1) Catholic life, 2) nun's life, 3) yoga life, 4) Buddhist life, 5) feminist life, 6) natural life, 7) life. Publicly, I am admitting that I am a spiritual materialist—been there, done that—but I am also saying that all of my spiritual experiences have worked together to prepare me for even deeper journeys combining all of the sacred technologies I have learned so that I can re-invent my own way.

The Grandmother recites the Mourners' Kaddish over her granddaughter.

Amidst growing discussions on the headscarf issue, the President of Turkey was holding the annual Republic Day Ball at the Presidential Palace. For the reception he sent one-person invitations to the members of the Parliament whose majority was held by the Islamic Democrats. This was his strategy to prevent their wives, who would naturally wear headscarves, from attending the night. I was outraged by this conservative secularism and wanted to express my personal protest, embodying the stress on the contemporary Islamic body. --Köken Ergun

A documentation of a performance/installation. Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes created a fictional religion based on inter-cultural confessions. Exhibiting themselves in Plexiglas boxes as "end-of-the-century saints", the two performers hear the confessions of audience members willing to reveal their intercultural fears and desires to the saints.

Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure is a fourteen-minute experimental video that unfolds through a series of short episodes. "To describe Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke's new video as ironic doesn't do it justice.

A four-part documentary, Yãkwá shows the most important ritual of the Enauênê-Nauê Indians (Brazil). For seven months every year, the spirits are venerated with offerings of food, song, and dance so that they will protect the community. In “The World Outside the Rock” the Yaõkwá festivities open with the Enauênê-Nauê preparing for the big fish-catch by making salt, canoes, and fish traps. In “Dataware’s Revenge” groups of men leave the villages for two months and build dams on forest waterways to catch fish as they return from spawning.

Shot with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, this colorful drama with song and dance numbers (plus burlesque acts) follows the libidinous poisoning of Vatican personnel by an otherworldly intruder. The cast is mostly young and vibrant and the songs staged as opulently as possible on a $400 budget. Anyone interested in these collaborative productions will find a lot to gawk at in this backstage romance with pagan overtures galore.