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Love Tapes

Wendy Clarke

2011 01:37:00 United StatesEnglishB&W and ColorMonoVideo
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Description

A selection of Love Tapes — a collection of video recordings of 2,500 people from diverse backgrounds who share their personal feelings about love. Love, as described throughout the tapes, is not defined by any one singular meaning, but is instead contextualized by the variety of personal perspectives and experiences within this collection. Such interpretations of love explore lust, friendship, first love, and familial love. This selection consists of 32 edited tapes from 1978-2011. The Love Tapes project began in 1977 and is ongoing.

"An older woman talked about how she had just fallen in love and it felt exactly the same as when she was 16. A young man said he did not want to feel love because it made his life too complicated. Another woman looked into the lens of the camera and talked as if she were talking to her lover, tearfully telling him how much she loved him. Each tape was unique: most people talked about romantic love and either the joy or pain of their experience."

— Wendy Clarke, Making the "Love Tapes"Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions, Kathleen McLean and Wendy Pollock, 2007

About Wendy Clarke

Since 1972, independent video artist, Wendy Clarke (daughter of independent filmmaker Shirley Clarke) has conceived and produced numerous interactive installations and tapes that have been exhibited internationally on television, in museums, galleries and public places.

"Wendy Clarke’s work can be seen as an extension of her mother’s interests in cinema and video, but from a radically different perspective. While Shirley Clarke’s works are bold, in-your-face and directed from a definitive point of view, Wendy Clarke, more introspective in nature, allows the characters in front of the camera to tell their own stories. It is a cinema of listening, quiet beauty and devastating emotion."

— Eye on a Director: Shirley and Wendy Clarke, Museum of Arts and Design, 2016