Wendy Clarke

Biography

Since 1972 Wendy Clarke has used video to produce interactive video installations and tapes. Her central project has been the Love Tapes, a series of over eight hundred short videotapes in which she documents people's individual definitions of the meaning of love. Clarke began Love Tapes in 1977, convinced that television could be a forum for personal expression. The project, which developed from her own video diary, uses the medium's immediacy and intimacy to explore the potential as a therapeutic, participatory tool. Isolated in a closed booth before a video camera and monitor, each participant speaks for three minutes on an aspect of love, and then chooses either to erase or exhibit the tape. Clarke has installed video booths in public spaces in around the world.

Clarke was born in 1944. She received a B.A. and an M.A. from Ryokan College; she is also a Tao Cultivator. She has received numerous awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her work has been screened and exhibited at several institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Walker Art Center, Minnesota; and Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut. She lives in Venice, California.