Elizabeth Stephens
  • PERFORMANCE
  • SCULPTURE / INSTALLATION
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
  • FILM/MEDIA
  • PRACTICE AS RESEARCH

1998-2006

 

2006

  • Love Art Lab

    Collaborator Annie Sprinkle

    Orange Wedding Installation Femina Potens Gallery, San Francisco, CA

    Wedding Outfits, Wedding Projection, Wedding Ephemera

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2005

  • I DO

    Collaborator Annie Sprinkle

    Red Wedding Installation Femina Potens Gallery, San Francisco, CA

    Wedding Outfits, Wedding Projection, Wedding Ephemera

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2004

  • THE WORKSHOP FROM HELL

    An opera in one act – Libretto Eileen Myles, Music Michael Webster

    The fax machine is connected to an outside telephone line. This enables anyone to fax any text or images they’d like to the bed. By faxing this work in a museum or gallery, anyone can be an artist. Red rope lights blink continuously, referring to the electric circulatory system of technology. The ubiquitous presence of technology molds our dreams even during sleep.

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  • The Porn Star Academic Panty Collection

    This series of bronzes juxtapose academic and porn star panties. Porn stars and academics are cultural heroes. They are both in the forefront of thought and practice around issues such as sexuality, sexism and identity politics. In the academic world the brightest intellectuals are fetishized in a manner that bears certain similarities to the ways in which porn fans adore their stars. Both are sexy, powerful and compelling. This work is homage and a wink to the bravery and chutzpah of porn stars and adventurous academics who are physically and intellectually stimulating, be it in the classroom or on the silver screen.

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2003

  • WISH YOU WERE HERE

    Exhibition Views – Projections, Photographs, Video Books, Website and An American Road Trip Map

    This exhibition was composed of various objects I produced while I was performing my roadtrip. Shown together these objects, photographs and video pieces represented my travels in terms of time, texture, space and imagery.

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  • WHAT IS ART GOOD FOR? 100X KUNST

    In collaboration with Annie Sprinkle – Kunsthalle, Vienna, Austria.

    Artists were invited to create signs for a Viennese park. Ours read “Be Nice to prostitutes and artists.”

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2002

  • U.S.A. QUILT

    American Flag, Photographs on Canvas, Denim 10’x7′

    This quilt is constructed of images I photographed in each state while I was on the road performing 3 separate versions of Wish You Were Here. The images are printed on canvas and sewn together. Each state is made from an image(s) that were taken in that state. The red ribbons represent the state capitals. The map of images is backed on an American Flag.

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  • VIDEO TRAVEL GUIDES, WHWY Project

    While traveling during my interactive road trip performance piece, Wish You Were Here, I shot hours of video footage. I also collected, read, and otherwise used several travel guides to the United States in preparation for and during the Wish You Were Here Project. These Video Travel Guides mark the spot where travel footage meets travel guide to provide a purely visual experience of my journey on the road and off.

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2000

  • PRESIDENTIAL

    Squirting Speculums, Talking Speculum, Lab Coats, Electronics, Flag and Ink; approximately 4’x10’x6′.

    A series of events occur sequentially. First, one speculum squirts blue ink onto a white lab coat, then the other speculum squirts red ink onto the other lab coat, then the speculum in front of the American flag says, “I’m sorry.” This piece is loosely based on the presidential fiasco between Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton but could be seen as a generic apology to the world for the many crises that the U.S. have had a hand in creating.

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1999

  • SQUIRT

    The speculum slowly moves back and forth, intermittently spitting a thin stream of blue ink onto the lab coat. Spitting ink as an act of rebellion against the authority that the lab coat signifies represents a kind of critical freedom for artists, women and others outside the system. Over time the coat became saturated with blue ink while the pan below the piece filled with excess liquid that in turn reflected the coat above.

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  • WORKOUT

    Steel, Video, Stirrups, Motor. Two frames 8’x4’x4′ each

    Two large gym-like frames, each with eight sets of gynecological stirrups that slowly open and close, face each other. Behind the stirrups on each frame is a bank of video monitors. The center monitors display footage of bodies in exercise. The larger outside monitors display a mouth expelling babies, houses, money and milk on one frame and on the other, a complimentary mouth is consuming these very same things. The shots are close-up, repetitive, and slow in order to examine body and consumer fetishism.

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1998

  • JUMP

    Steel, Water, Video Projection, Sound; 14’x4’x2′

    A tall steel ladder looms over a small bucket of water. A video projector projects the lips of several women reading a siren-like text into the bucket. The text dares and cajoles the viewer to jump. This work was inspired by cartoon characters who would leap from tall ladders into small buckets of water, defying fear and logic, only to emerge unscathed from seemingly impossible situations. These characters were too foolish to be afraid of death and for that, I loved the

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  • PARTIAL RECALL

    Steel, Video and Monitors, Motor; 11’x9’x9’ – Etched Mirror Plaques, Enriched White Flour Statistics

    Collaboration with E.G. Crichton. This site-specific installation juxtaposed Ben Franklin’s sayings with contemporary statistics. We placed our own historical plaques in Old Town, Philadelphia. Each one was etched with a partial Franklin aphorism. Below each plaque we stenciled an enriched white flour statistic consisting of a certain fact, stable for an hour or a week. We questioned whether statistics have become the anchor for today’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy that seems to ignore real social problems and needs.

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  • AUTO-BIOGRAPHY

    Van, welded lightening rods, LED’s, Megaphone, Slide Projector

    Collaboration with E.G. Crichton. This was a roving performance that evolved over the course of Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival. A Plymouth Voyager became the “Ben-Mobile,” complete with Ben’s hundred-dollar portrait. We drove this vehicle throughout Old City, reading Franklin’s autobiography through a loudspeaker. At night, we scrolled Franklin’s aphorisms on the LED signs and projected his quotes onto the walls of passing buildings.

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  • DYSPHORIAS: TROUBLE IN TOYLAND

    Wood Cutouts, Lighting, Sound Track, Video, Rugs

    Collaboration with E.G. Crichton and Mary Psiongas. “Toyland” used the trope of toys to investigate the dysphoria of gender. Large shadows and sound permeated the gallery, evoking a troubled childhood landscape. Toy silhouettes snaked around the walls of the gallery following a boy-to-girl gender line. In the next room, viewers could sit on toy-shaped rugs to watch videos with slowly dissolving abstract color and quick subliminal image flashes of boy toys speaking with female toy voices, and visa versa.

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