Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1

The artist stalks and serenades Joe Dimaggio in her car as he strolls the docks, unaware that McGuire is secretly videotaping his every step.

“McGuire’s use of her camera as a conduit for shared experience [is] at the heart of the piece that first brought her to a wider audience, Joe DiMaggio 1,2,3, a video in three parts about a chance encounter. Sitting in her parked car in San Francisco’s Marina, McGuire’s camera was running when elderly baseball legend Joe DiMaggio unexpectedly walked into the shot. In the tape, she follows him, continuing to shoot, and begins making up songs about her feelings for him as she drives.”

—Nicole Armour, “Alternate States,” Film Comment (July/August 2000)

This title is also available on Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1.

A deft and cunning re-examination of John Boy’s near-death experience at the sawmill. A homespun midnight deconstruction of an entire era of television mannerisms.

“One of the strengths of The Waltons, a video that records a session of TV viewing using a handheld camera, is its ability to convey how our surroundings inform our experience. The video doesn’t stray far from the images on the TV screen, but our attention is divided between the show’s action and the off-camera activity in the apartment.”

— Nicole Armour, “Alternate States,” Film Comment (July/August 2000)

This title is also available on Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1.

A performance about the artist’s experience in the aftermath of an accident.

“While When I Was a Monster conveys McGuire’s feelings about her own body after falling off a cliff, it also articulates the universal lack of satisfaction women feel when contemplating their physical selves, and encapsulates another part of McGuire’s project: the demonstration of the performative, grotesque aspects of femininity. … Though she appears to be in pain, our sympathy hasn’t been solicited, and the fact that we can observe such a private examination feels like an intrusion … McGuire confronts the audience with her weakened, disfigured body and reminds us of our own fragility.”

—Nicole Armour, “Alternate States,” Film Comment (July/August 2000)

This title is also available on Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1 and American Psycho(drama): Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford.

A wonderfully witty work about nostalgia and desperation. Anne McGuire portrays a Kennedy-era singer performing in the space where theatre meets television. McGuire's Garland-esque gestures provide both a sense of tragedy and humor. I Am Crazy And You’re Not Wrong weaves narrative, performance, memory and history into an ironic and haunting work of singular proportions.

This title is also available on Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1 and American Psycho(drama): Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford.

The Telling (1994-98) shows Anne McGuire telling two acquaintances a secret from her past using a three-camera set-up in the Desi Arnez style. The commodification of intimacy is not the strangest thing about this work. The fractured editing, silences, and lapses in continuity suggest vast narratives far more evocative than anything revealed on screen. McGuire uses television vernacular ambiguously to provoke discomfort, two things that television strives to avoid at all costs.

This title is also available on Anne McGuire Videoworks: Volume 1 and American Psycho(drama): Sigmund Freud vs. Henry Ford.