I Will Take You

JOHN STURGEON

I Will Take You

a video projection/sculptural installation

created for a solo exhibition: Two Video Installations

B&W, 13:42 minutes, sound; performer: Aysha Quinn

I Will Take You - features a large B&W video projection of a dark cloaked female circling in the desert. The projection sits above an equilateral triangular floor installation of "desert-like" gray clay, in which sets a goblet illuminated by a triangular inset of violet light.

Description:

Bursting forth from the sound and pattern of electronic cross-hatching, a cloaked figure stretches forward across the bright, flat desert - gradually spiraling inward towards the camera, attached to the end of a long umbilical. Mixed with the howling wind, we hear a male voice (Sturgeon) conjure the images of a dream. The dark cloaked female begins her long meditative encircling. At the end of the wind-tense cord she carries before her a goblet of water The camera pans against the sky and distant mountains, zooms close on rippling shadows across the desert floor, following her steady rotation. Spiraling in, the voice of the dream returns. Finally, her gaze confronts the viewer before submerging again into the web of electronic patterning.

Reference: the video for I Will Take You was produced in the Spring of 1977, at El Mirage, dry lake - Mojave Desert. Additionally, the dream text was used in the Los Angeles performance of Conjunction/Opposition II, ©1977 – John Sturgeon.

Components:

B&W video projection (approx. 10' x 8') 13:42 mins. - looped, with poetic text and sound, voice over - John Sturgeon. Black room, white projection surface, gray clay floor installation - 9' equilateral triangle, goblet with water, triangular violet light inset, 2 speaker & amp sound system.

Installation Note: originally created for Sturgeon’s solo exhibition Two Video Installations, which included the two-channel installation: As Above, As Below, January 1978 for the Long Beach Museum of Art, L.B., California.

I Will Take You was re-created in 1984 for Video: Retrospective, Long Beach Museum of Art, 1974-1984 (Part II), LBMA, Long Beach, CA

voice over & original text - John Sturgeon:

I will take you. I will take you down a long dark tunnel, a long dark rock tunnel, straight - straight down the tunnel till it curves to the right, spiraling to the right, spiraling to a small chamber.

There's a feared monster here - there is a feared monster here - that you must come and meet - alone. And these are some tricks of communication - tricks of communication.

It is dark and black with a single horn - an animal with a horn lying on golden straw. Remember it is friendly, and you must come alone - it is friendly - remember - you must come alone!

JOHN STURGEON

Sturgeon's work can be seen as a continuing process of concentration and abstraction. Through the process of a continuing introspection, the viewer of Sturgeon's work is confronted with the conflict between the rational and observable aspects of an outer landscape coldly portrayed in black and white video, and a 'mystical' non-objective set of symbols and activities constructed from the language of a variety of non-rational symbol systems. Both worlds are posed as mutually inclusive; both seem clearly related to Sturgeon's exploration of his consciousness.

Sturgeon's use of state-of-the-art communications technology to express this basic concern (the coexistence of a highly personal yet completely universal kind of self-knowledge) is similarly rooted in his desire to propound the timeless in terms of the most immediate and ephemeral form of communication available to him. Initially, his work took the form of environmental sculpture, in which he dealt with what he perceived as the split between the individual and his or her environment. But as it became clear to Sturgeon that this mistaken perception had its roots in a more internalized conflict, he found that video was a medium well-suited to the kind of reflective and synthetic work he had to pursue. After making a series of dense, heavily edited tapes, during which time he evolved a highly evocative personal symbolic language drawn from Jungian and Cabalistic archetypes, Sturgeon's work evolved from pure videotape into combined live and taped performances which even further exemplified the distinctions he sought to unify. The dialogue between live performance and recorded time created for Sturgeon a space in which he could fully explore his universal, yet personal, dialogue.

David A. Ross, director

Two Video Installations catalogue

Long Beach Museum of Art, 1978

ARTnews

Larson, Susan C., "John Sturgeon: Two Videos

Installations", Artnews, Vol. 77, No. 5, May 1978