DA   Installation Floor Plan   Color Stills from Installation Document of Installation

Elements of the installation:      5 slide projectors in total 3 static & 2 revolving carousels Loop tape on slowed boom box --“I Say A Little Prayer For You” by Dionne Warwick plays eerily at slowed tempo. It play continuously in the room. 80 slides revolving      --In entering the room, the viewer passes across the slide projections and the images change gender as one is momentarily blocked.  With the revolving carousels, there is always a different set of juxtaposed images—the piece is constantly moving, shape-shifting and changing. Timeline --Static image projected on the south wall of a man in the 1950’s and a butch woman in the 1990’s.  This image appears continuous, against the same background & is up during the duration of the installation.   Daddy’s Girl   – Sculpture of two white starched shirts on hangers, one men’s adult, one male child’s, identical both with belts hanging out of the cuffs.  The sculpture is backlit by the slide projector on the north side of the room.   DA: “Da” is an old-fashioned Irish nickname meaning father or papa. da, da, a baby’s utterance, short for dad DA, short for Duck’s Ass, after the 1950’s men’s hairstyle. DA for double action trigger performs two functions of cocking & releasing the hammer or trigger. D.A. for District Attorney

DA begins with word play on the various meanings of its title.  This is an installation steeped in nostalgia for a lost time as evidenced by the 1970’s coloration of the photographic stills projected on the walls of the space.  Da is a formidable father figure, a man of the 1950’s.  In the metaphorical realm and in the atmosphere of the installation space, the mind has the power to associate and this “association” carries real power.  Like Pavolov’s classic conditioning, two concepts or stimuli become associated when the experience of one leads to the effects of another.  The sight of a belt or smell of its leather can bring on the fear-like symptoms experienced prior to a beating.  Association is also the state of being connected together as in memory or imagination.  An association can also be a way of formally grouping people or creating social order, like the grouping of people into two “sexes” (i.e. two separated and gender divided categories).  How a man acts or looks, or how a woman acts or looks, might not be such a simple construct unless reiterated by specific social norms and policed by a society’s members for signs of any deviation from these “accepted” categories.  An association is also an affinity group or the act of consorting with or joining a group.  One’s association with one’s family is an affiliation, a relation resulting from interaction or dependence.

DA is organized around these concepts.  It is an investigation into childhood abuse & the way that violence is passed down from one generation to the next.  It examines gender as a category by creating moments of “crossing”.  Two images that have been layered together become unrecognizable as one gender or the other, until one of the pairing is blocked from view.  The images crisscross “appropriate” gender boundaries until those categories are exploded, through the play of multiple images upon one another.  The installation is in this way, a model for the way that represention creates meaning through the play and visual power of images.  It also offers an alternative representation of what a father / daughter relationship can look like if either party choses to cross the gender divide through dress, gesture or somantic behavior.