Eric Hoyt wrapped the panel by recording his own love tape, and expressing his feelings about the NEH.

In the spirit of Wendy Clarke’s work, he’d like for it to be shared widely and seen by as many people as possible.

My favorite thing to do while building the website has been to just hit the “Random Video” button and be taken to the expanse reaches of Wendy’s collection.

https://wendyclarke.wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/

https://wendyclarke.wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/exhibits

And more exhibits are coming! We’ll be writing more and gathering work from our excellent advisory committee in the coming weeks!

https://wendyclarke.wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/videos/19?t=280

This love tapes participant really talked through the “ABCs” of love!

“This website is not just for researchers. It also an introduction to Wendy’s work”

I’m so glad that Ashton Leach has a chance to speak - she’s worked extensively with Wendy’s tapes and has been amazing at highlighting and elevating unique voices from within the collection. She is brilliant and has been absolutely great at “putting emotional savvy into the site”

In my completely unbiased opinion*, it’s a pretty great looking website!

*I was the primary web developer for the project

“This was a really big grant that was really meaningful to us, and which still is.”

Yes, Matt St. John does so much it really does feel like there are two of him sometimes!

And finally to bookend the panel, my great colleagues Eric Hoyt and Ashton Leach will share some specific examples of love tapes, as well as make the official “public debut” of our online version of Wendy Clarke’s collection: https://wendyclarke.wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu

Wendy Clarke’s work reworks the rhetorical construction of documentary film into “I make it possible for you to speak about you to you (and maybe then to us)”

In Wendy Clarke’s “Love Tapes” project, the subject was the first audience, and had the immediate option to opt in to having their work added to the collection.

Video, in the hand of certain artists, had emerged as a unique and alternative platform for confession. The ritual act of confession always unfolds within a power relation - e.g. police, priests, and psychiatrists…. and the video artist?

Next up is Michael Renov presenting his work: “Facilitation Art: The Ethics of Wendy Clarke’s Video Practice”

Personal aside: stories like these are why archival research is so damn fun!

The original project (as pieced together from a proposal and other archival documents) sought to explore the formal possibilities that might arise from melding cinema and jazz together

Though the two successfully produced the documentary Ornette: Made in America (1985), there was the possibility for an earlier project during the 1960s. Though they filmed significant amounts of footage, the project unfortunately never came together

Huge shoutout to Mare Lodu, graduate student in the UW-Madison iSchool who oversaw and ensured quality control throughout our in-house digitization process

Because the WCFTR was able to work directly with Wendy, we were able to to fill in missing metadata and identify which tapes were at most urgent need for digitization, as well as decide which tapes should be handled in-house and what would be sent to external vendors

The WCFTR was able to digitize small portions of Shirley and Wendy’s work by partnering with other institutions and securing funding from a variety of sources. But to digitize the bulk of the collection (nearly 1000 tapes), a much larger grant would be needed