Melissa Clarke is a Brooklyn NY based interdisciplinary artist primarily making multimedia installations using sound, video, and interactive art. Melissa received her masters from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program with a two year Tisch School of the Arts Departmental Fellowship. She was born in Syracuse, NY and has also lived in Washington, DC. Clarke has shown in small experimental venues and with larger institutions, ranging from Issue Project Room and the Electronic Music Foundation to the Queens Museum.
Melissa's work includes collaborations with others in fields as variable as geophysics, film, to performance. She works with scientists, programmers and engineers, and she creates custom hardware and software for her work. Clarke extrapolates research and observation into systematic points that unfold in temporal video and sound sculptures, culminating in experiential installations, performances, single channel generative media compositions and sometimes into still images. She works across mediums as a series unfolds, such as her recent work 'Untitled Antarctica,' which deals with data and mapping, while looking at hybridizations of wilderness and human spaces, and toward considerations of nature at the nexus of human experience, myth, science and information collection.
About Clarke's Video: "The first scene,'Moocha: I have a fly on my plate,' begins with a video of a lone diner, half-heartedly involved in following the commands of her physical appetite. Slowly, she is joined by a lone fly, who moves from becoming a curiosity, to a pest to a distraction, to a true obsession. Supporting this movement are sharp, jarring cuts in the video. Watching these almost slasher-flick edits, we wonder whether this woman, who is lost and without control over self, will be able to exert the ultimate control over another."
DC Theatre Scene Review: Pebble-and-Cart Cycle July 21, 2009, by Anna Brungardt
About Clarke's Video: "Two [such] films are shown throughout the piece, both of which could occupy the rest of this review with their own merited analyses. The piece launches from this filmic core."
Washington City Paper Review: Hip Shot: Pebble-and-Cart Cycle: one-line tragedies by Chris Swanson, 19, 2009
About Clarke's Video: "Moocha: I have a fly on my plate" - is essentially a video installation that sets the tone for the entire cycle."
Acoustic Imaging: Upper NY Harbor exhibits in May 2009
(as part of the collaborative Installation: Underfoot in Constant Motion
w/ Ben Owen & Shimpei Takeda.)
May 2009, The Frying Pan, Curated by Suzanne Thorpe
Sponsored by the Electronic Music Foundation
Pier 66 Maritime, Hudson River Park
West Side Highway at 26th Street, New York City
auto show day of the dead
Video by Melissa Clarke
Developed through a collaborative effort w/
Barge Recordings: The Fun Years
Snohole exhibits in Spring 2008
475 KENT Lives, organized by independent curator Koan-Jeff Baysa, and coordinated by artist Lisa Mordhorst (both 475 Kent residents) and the Queens Museum of Art, opens April 9 at the QMA Gallery at the Bulova Coporate Center in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Developed through a collaborative effort w/
Terra Incognita Theater Company
May 23 and 24th 8:00pm
Dixon Place, 258 Bowery NYC, Tickets $15
Conceived and Directed by Polina Klimovitskaya
Video and Sound Art by Melissa Clarke
Puppets by Jessica Scott
with Jeremy Goren, Natalia Krasnova, Ellen Lanese
Michael Moscoso, Anthony Spaldo and Dolly Williams
Produced by David Djambazov and Joe Rosato
