Like an experiment in an underwater dream laboratory, the re-videoed image of Sturgeon’s submerged face looks out; while as investigator, he stops and starts the underwater sequence, measuring the air bubbles surfacing.

In a brief sudden explosion of inhalations and exhalations – breathing in and out of plastic bag… a sinister, sexually ambiguous masked being erupts with desperate almost dangerous energy.

Gesturing their conversation from behind dark glasses in face-to-face headshots, Sturgeon and Sobel exaggeratedly mimic a computer-synthesized voice track.

By repeating a sequence, then working directly on the surface of the monitor with alligator clips, Sturgeon transforms the act of folding a shirt into a painterly field of self-information gathering.

Conceptually, this is a tape whose imagery unfolds in a series of skits, through a deepening detective-style investigation of the nature of sexuality.

Steadily grinning from under a straw hat, a beguiling character alternately manipulates the camera position then resituates himself in front of it, creating an uneasy yet humorous mood.

Sturgeon opens with a series of ritual body gestures, signaling with primal shapes, the square and triangle, as wind sounds whistle.

Using the desert floor like a drawing surface for a diagrammatical enactment of the function of conjunction and opposition, Sturgeon combines a delicate and precise ritualistic structure with the vastness and unpredictability of the windswept landscape.

This highly edited tape of carefully composed images speaks clearly an inner world language of dream space and alchemical ritual.

A series of four evenings of evolving video performances, with Aysha Quinn, consisting of black/white live & pre-recorded video with sculptural sets, at Site, San Francisco, CA.

A “performed” video/sculptural installation created for a solo exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

A video performance shown at the AND/OR Gallery in Seattle, Washington. The performance consisted of black/white live & pre-recorded video, with a sculptural set and text.

A video performance shown at the L.A. Louver Gallery in Venice, CA with accompanying performer, Aysha Quinn.

An installation created for the Long Beach Museum of Art, “I Will Take You” features a large black and white video projection of a dark cloaked female circling in the desert.

Mining subconscious terrain among clay symbols and archetypical beings, a metaphorical archeologist/fisherman plumbs psychic depths for latent clues to a more essential self.

Uroboros revolves around a mandala metaphor, a mythological snake that devours itself, tail first, symbolizing the unity and continuance of opposites.

A collaborative, interactive satellite performance with Aysha Quinn & Gary Lloyd, created for the Artist & Television Conference Cablecast, 1982.

SPINE/TIME is a poetic and dramatic work on the transformative process of being.

A collaborative video/performance originally performed at the 2nd Intermedia Arts Festival Corraboree Theater…

The undulating, sweeping dance of the camera (by Dan Reeves) hovers around Sturgeon’s meditative seated figure. Amid a dream-like setting – candle, woodpile and saw – the imagery swirls with the poetic text and ripping sound track.

“Fragments” was a collaborative performance by Quinn/Sturgeon 1984-87. An hour long variable collection of inter-related performance vignettes, tape sketches, monologues and interactive live computer graphic imagery developed over several years.

the HOUSE of INFLUENCE expresses the tension/pressure of an internal dialogue, with poetic asides and the image/acoustic metaphor of relentless water about the artist.

The translucent wall glows with the rhythmic color sequences, and moves in response to air currents. Monitors and muted neon provide all light for the installation…

Melting Pot is a video that presents a collage of complex images and sounds to depict the complex fabric of its subject.

Inside Out utilizes camera generated imagery, digitally processed material, computer graphics and animation to investigate the internal sense of the boundaries of self.

Falling Moor was one of several works Sturgeon executed as part of Symposium Moor 1992, an international festival of performance & site-specific work on the Wittemoor.

Symposium Moor 1992 was an International Festival of performance & site specific work on the Wittemoor, a state nature preserve in northern Germany.

Moor Battery was one of several works Sturgeon executed as part of Symposium Moor 1992, an international festival of performance & site specific work on the Wittemoor.

Fishing Moor was one of several works Sturgeon executed as part of Symposium Moor 1992, an international festival of performance & site-specific work on the Wittemoor.

TRAP/bat is a sculptural video installation composed of six channels of pre-recorded video and one channel of live video.

NARKOSE is a two channel video and sculptural installation, with poetic text (English & German).

Blooming, while we are sinking is a collaborative video installation (Akkermann/Sturgeon), with sculptural elements, sound and dual language, spoken text.

…of the father – an installation evoking issues of the father and the nature of fathering, through two videos, poetry and sculpture elements.

Arm’s Length navigates from the formal austerity of the museum, through the ambience of the city and daily life of a single parent’s familial efforts, to lumbering stalkers amid the ‘red light’ district.

Dissolving is an interactive CD­-ROM, featuring poetry, sound, image map and Quick-Time movies. The central image, a b&w photograph of a seated figure engulfed in a cloud, forms a large image map which contains all the elements of the work.

It is the best of times
when the need for language surrenders
and gazes twinkle -

Brother embraces brother
neighbor greets neighbor
and the wind sings gentle in the branch
…

A video projection performance at Kulturetage, Oldenburg, Germany with simulcast for N. German television. The performance depicts a fateful illusion or delusion by investigating some of the contradictions inherent in expanding consumption, unrestrained desire for possession and a short-­sided view of the consequence to actions.

Willful descent
of collective urgency
to control – to own, profit
no matter what the imbalance
…

Borders, boundaries – dotted lines
“die Mauer”
disputed territory,
no-fly zones
DMZ
…

There is a way the body learns
when it moves through this place,
where it flows down below conception -
seeps beneath pretenses -
…

A collaboration between artists from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the Fachhochschule Schwaebisch Hall, Germany.

at low tide is a collaborative, multimedia project by John Sturgeon and Christina Nguyen Hung that was created for the das Wattenmeer (Wadden Sea), an exhibition at Artothek in Oldenburg, Germany coordinated by slap-social land art project.

An experimental poetic work spun from a train-rush of collective imprints of war and idiosyncratic archiving as memory, “Archivist’s” multi-stream image collages scroll or overlap within the larger frame, as a poetic thread fuses with acoustic compositions.