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Love Tapes: Chapter One

Wendy Clarke

1977 00:31:31 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Love

Description

"I got my first Sony Portapak in 1972 and started keeping a video diary. I sat facing my image on the monitor and talked about what was going on in my life. In 1977 I decided to talk about my current experience with love. I made one half hour tape and watched it play back. Then I made another and watched it play back, and one more... I was done fro now. What follows is the middle half hour and is the tape that I used to start the Love Tapes."

–Wendy Clarke

As of 2024, about 2,500 people have made a love tape.

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