Amanda Martin Katz

2012 Southern California MFA Invitational Exhibition, presented by den contemporary at the Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles CA

Collaboration with Shalini S. Patel

John Larsen is a continuous video projection displaying the addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth of a thousand different American men named John Larsen. The information is formatted into a scroll in which each line fades upward into the negative space between the two preceding lines. When installed, the projector is located across the room at a low angle, requiring the viewer to negotiate and simultaneously invade the picture plane through the shadow of her form and the traces of the scrolling text on her body. Text functions as image, as the name ‘John Larsen,’ repeated 1000 times, comes to lose its denotative value.

This work has been presented as both a static video installation and as a performance, which involves a script describing the process of gathering and organizing the 1000 names read while walking within the projection.