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Call Mark Video Collective is a collective based in San Diego, CA. Since the early 1980s, its films, video installations, and performances have surfaced—often untraceable to a definitive first. Despite dedicated efforts by UC San Diego’s Art, Architecture & Art History Library to comb through its archives, the collective eludes a fixed starting point, much like the shifting media landscape it inhabits.

 

Marisol Carr, Ben Moore, Karô Castillo, and Claire Nakamura are credited as the founding members of what has evolved into a sprawling community of over 300 contributors across more than four decades. In its early days, Call Mark took root in the corridors and studios of UC San Diego’s visual arts department, its works rapidly proliferated throughout the city. Before long, nearly every exhibition or screening in San Diego bore its unmistakably chaotic, process-driven signature.

 

In recent years, the collective has shifted focus—less on self-contained acts and more on generating a collective noise through collaborations, commissions, and education. Call Mark Video Collective now operates as a platform for video-making workshops and media arts study groups, emphasizing community over individual authorship. This evolution has led some to mistakenly perceive Call Mark as fading into obscurity—a notion the collective doesn’t dispute, at least within the monopoly of today’s communication media.

 

As for the name, legend links it to an exercise by David Antin, a former UC San Diego faculty member, who tasked students with crafting texts by stealing sentences from library books. Ben Moore’s resulting piece allegedly included the line: Please place a ‘call Mark’ next to the urgent messages in the log, supposedly lifted from a Harold Robbins novel—a source yet to be verified. Others suggest the name pays tribute to Karô Castillo’s cat, Mark, who accompanied her everywhere, leash in tow. The truth, much like the collective itself, defies singular definition.

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At nineteen, Karô Castillo was invited to lead a writing workshop at a community centre. It was Karô’s first time leading a workshop, and Karô was nervous that no one would attend. The smiling-sympathetic student-volunteers running the arts program at the community centre suggested Karô tape her phone number to the entrance door, which, for security reasons, remained closed. The community centre was in a mostly residential building, that didn’t exactly scream community centre, and that lacked any air of invitation. Karô imagined herself as a jittery workshop attendee balking at such an unwelcoming, even creepy facade. On top of following the volunteers’ suggestion, Karô added a line beneath her phone number, “Come write!” “Come write!,” Karô was sure was the most convincing phrase she could come up with. Writing, to Karô, was the most enticing possibility on earth. Karô sat alone in the workshop room, materials spread across the table, with a few minutes left before the workshop started. The silence was slowly devouring her self-confidence when her phone rang. On the other side of the line, she could immediately tell it wasn’t the voice of an eager writer. It was that of a woman tasked with delivering sleeping pills to someone upstairs, she explained swallowing her words. This woman couldn’t risk buzzing the apartment—the instructions she had received were clear: don’t ring, don’t risk waking the insomniac up, in case they’d finally fallen asleep. Karô, with nothing better to do and a tangle of nerves to kill, agreed to collect the pills at the door, climb the stairs, and drop off the pills at the insomniac’s door’s mail slot. By then, sleep and Karô were strangers. The dark circles under her eyes were practically art to a generation that romanticized personal misery in favour of artistic creation. For those who actually cared about her, though, her insomnia was worrying. Her friends blamed the hours she spent milking dialogues from TV shows. They urged her to take a break from a writing that she claimed knotted her own thoughts with voices on-screen. Halfway up the stairs, Karô took a break—lungs raw from an overachiever’s smoking habit. Karô examined the pill bottle in her hand. The pills rattled like dice. When the thought of taking some pills crossed her mind, she didn’t hesitate: unscrewing the lid, tipping a few into her palm, and slipping them into her pocket. That night, after a sparsely attended—but attended nonetheless—workshop, a pill worked its way into her dreams. They dragged her into dialogues she’d never heard but couldn’t believe she hadn’t. She woke with dialogues tumbling through her mind, words that didn’t feel like hers but didn’t belong to anyone else either. In the morning haze, she recorded herself speaking them aloud. She transcribed the audio recordings and called the transcriptions poems. The poems became self-published chapbooks she sold across campus, bars, cinemas, and theatres. Karô submitted them to poetry contests and won a few. Karô began reenacting and videotaping her dream dialogue scenes, moving through the scenes her sleeping mind had played. Before long, she was haunting the video editing lab at UC San Diego. Ostensibly, she spent hours splicing video fragments, but anyone who asked her would hear “just writing,” as answer.​​​​

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Dear Call Mark Video Collective,

 

Yesterday I watched your live transmission and truly enjoyed it. I thought, “Good thing I went to the opening I went to, where I met the writer I met, who heard my struggle, and who told me about you, in time for me to Google you, find your webpage, and attend your live transmission.” And that’s how I found you… Presenting the path to a first-time, out-of-the-blue writing recipient feels like a protocol for this kind of email, don’t you think?

 

I’d like to invite Call Mark Video Collective to think with me. I know words are for thinking, and with words, Call Mark Video Collective began thinking with me while I was on the metro—Call Mark Video Collective from/in my head. I like your collective and what I think you think by collective. I imagine you thinking like a Russian Doll.

 

Box/inbox/unbox/hide/store/surface.

 

I’ve been set to think about boxes by a friend with whom I’m writing a journal. Issue #1, which will be printed in June, is going to be on boxes. One of the things I think about boxes is how, even though “box” starts with the letter B, which does have a strong presence in the word, it is the X that stands out. I think of “box” as an X-word. In a word, the letter X is such a striking feature that, unlike other letters, a word doesn’t have to start with X to be considered an X-word. Take “extra” as another example.

 

What I want to think about with Call Mark Video Collective involves lists of words in alphabetical order—hence me thinking about letters in a way where I know that words beginning with D are the ones that disappoint, words beginning with P are the ones that promise, and words that hurt are the ones that begin with a T. This clumsy theory is part of a writing project that has entirely mobilised me and led me to the conclusion that I need to collaborate with a video collective, without fully understanding what a video collective is or what working with a video collective is like.

 

This was the struggle I shared with my writer friend, who led me to write this email. I hope it’s not too out of touch, just enough to signal the touch of my thinking, hoping to encounter correspondence in San Diego.

 

I thought about finding some time to meet online. Would you be down for that? I’m writing from Copenhagen. I think that if we call, at some point, you will tell me, “We are just the people for the job!”

 

What do you think? 

I hope the best!

 

All my best,

Vinícius Maffei

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In an archivist-though-writerly whim, some textual registers were gathered, organised, edited (we won’t lie, with the help of ChatGPT as well; it’s extensive material, and we don’t fear AI—what does it do, after all, but find patterns and process them, changing the future that is doomed for change anyway?), and invited some members and friends to write. We won’t lie, it wasn’t an easy process (not even with ChatGPT’s help—knowing how to ask for what you want can be more taxing than finding it yourself, and yourself, in this case, was ourselves, and mostly myself, who went sleepless for many nights until, one spring morning, after what anyone who had seen it transpire would have called it a breakdown, I could say myself gathered again).

I went to do laundry. In the air, a certain air of perfection. That day I had waken from a dream including a title I had wanted to give a work that never was—one that, nevertheless, in due time, found its place in this effort, this struggle, inspired by this certain air of perfection I’m afraid (and content) will be set: Insurmountable Will.

Insurmountable Will includes a love letter, long-forgotten gossip, artistic precision, and just a general sense of what Giorgio Agamben calls the extemporaneous in What Is the Contemporary?, a text I read over during those sleepless nights. 

Surfacing the corners of the Call Mark Video Collective—its sociability, its kinships—summoned the Agamben text I had read more than once in school, always with the same professor. A professor who during this process—a process much longer than a few nights, a year-long process—passed away.

And so, this insurmountable will I dedicate to her, who made me aware that the extemporaneous is a mode of being that is neither fully of the present nor simply against it. Instead, it involves a disjunctive relationship to time—being both within and at a distance from the now. In a class discussion, we deemed the extemporaneous a site of resistance and transformation. The contemporary subject, then, is one who does not conform to the given conditions of their time, but rather exposes its fractures, transparencing its unseen possibilities.

I love all my friends because they hold me when spring doesn’t shed perfectness—and when it does, they let me experience perfect correspondence with them—because they teach me how to live life and how to be; they make me want to be; they know more than I do—about the Call Mark Video Collective and about life in general, in spite of my stubbornness. My friends come together to tell me a quote by Ali Smith from How to be Both:

“... many things get forgiven in the course of a life: nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right.”

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Austrian poet Ernst Jandl performed his poem schtzngrmm in Berlin at a poetry festival celebrating the legacy of the Wiener Gruppe. The Wiener Gruppe was a loose-knit avant-garde constellation of poets and writers, formed in 1953. In the audience of Ernst Jandl’s performance was 28-year-old Eku Wand, a Düsseldorf-born German and soon-to-be art graduate from Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste. Jandl’s stomping, gesturing, and guttural sounds that vocalised the sounds of a battlefield, made an impression on Eku Wand.

       One afternoon, a call began its journey on a rotary-dial telephone, clicking pulses threading through copper wires and switching stations in due course ringing in San Diego. Perhaps it was answered at a payphone or by a Call Mark Video Collective member hunched over a kitchen table, scribbling notes in the margins of a zine.

       It was 1988, and it was Eku Wand who was calling the Call Mark Video Collective. Eku Wand was calling from Berlin. Before saying much—perhaps to a few members crowding around the phone to catch the words from its hand-piece speaker, or maybe it was on loudspeaker—Eku Wand asked if they knew Austrian poet Ernst Jandl, a name none of them recognised. Then he mentioned Samuel Beckett, whose name was familiar to everyone. Their first and lasting impression of Eku Wand was of a pretentious German who, when he meant to say “great,” said “crate”—and who, believing he was saying “great,” said “crate” quite a lot.

       Ben Moore knew some German. He translated parts of Ernst Jandl’s Laut und Luise aloud from a volume he borrowed from the art library, over beers at Joe’s Java. Ben Moore’s German was almost exhausted when he remarked that Eku Wand was a funny name. “Wand” means “wall” in German, he said. It stopped being funny, though, when Jeff Wall’s name came up. Jeff Wall’s Eviction Struggle had recently appeared and prompted heated debates, particularly since eviction was a reality for some in the Call Mark Video Collective, and mainly because of the politics of staging documentary photography.

       Eku Wand spoke to Ernst Jandl after the performance presented in the context of celebrating the Wiener Gruppe’s legacy. Eku Wand was skilled with technology, and passionate about language, but even more passionate about money. On the path to founding Pixelpark, a design and animation studio, he first had to complete art school, and Ernst Jandl’s performance had just given him an idea for his graduation piece, which involved Ernst Jandl. That same night, Eku Wand pitched his idea to Jandl, who replied: “Yes, yes, and yes.” After those three assured yeses, it became difficult to get hold of Ernst Jandl. Eku Wand had to take the train to Vienna to track Jandl down and, finally, record him reading, to produce the video-poem Poems of Ernst Jandl (Bestiarium), which Eku Wand presented as his graduation work.

       On the phone with the Call Mark Video Collective, Eku Wand tried to reproduce the t-t-t-t’s and grrrmmmmm’s from Ernst Jandl’s schtzngrmm performance he had seen. However, what ultimately won a “yes,” this time from the Call Mark Video Collective, was Eku Wand’s reference to Samuel Beckett’s Not I mouth scene—an important influence on both Eku Wand’s project with Ernst Jandl and the Call Mark Video Collective’s work.

       Eku Wand was creating an animation of 25 mouths arranged in a grid, synchronizing their movements with those of Ernst Jandl’s aloud-read words. Using an Amiga-2000, Eku Wand meticulously set the mouths in motion by retrieving and combining lip positions, composing patterns that performed Jandl’s poetry. The Amiga-2000, a recently launched personal computer, was popular among multimedia artists, animators, and video production professionals for its advanced graphics and sound capabilities. Weeks went by as the Amiga-2000 rendered pixel by pixel, but it ultimately failed to deliver the results that Eku Wand had expected. Faced with technical hurdles, Eku Wand reached out to the Call Mark Video Collective, who were well-versed and known to be well-versed in the Amiga-2000 since the collective had made waves with a groundbreaking computer animation showcased at the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria.

       Call Mark Video Collective was never credited for Poems of Ernst Jandl (Bestiarium), but they didn’t mind. They enjoyed every corner of the project and often spoke at length about it, showing the work signed by Eku Wand as their own.

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David and Eleanor Antin drove an old Cadillac with all their belongings from the New York where they had both grown up and with whose downtown cultural world they had been deeply involved but which had become claustrophobic, anxious, and inbred, leaving them with no reason to stay—Eleanor was thirty-five, David was thirty-seven, and their son was just a year old—passing through Phoenix the day Andy Warhol was shot and crossing the desert the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, until they reached San Diego, where David had already flown to to take a look at the job the day a small earthquake shook the city, and as he watched the palms sway and water spill out of swimming pools, he decided that San Diego was the right place to be, even though teaching had never been one of his goals, and the job involved directing the university gallery and teaching some classes in writing and art, which, once he and his family were settled, he had to figure out how to approach, not wanting to deal with hundreds of bad student poems, leading him to adopt a quasi-Oulipian rule: You can write about anything in the world you want, except… somebody else knows more about it than you, and it’s already in a book in the library. Go to the library and steal it.

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My name is Michael Pavia. My brother was a member of Call Mark, during his studies at UCSD from 2016 to 2019. I regret to say his time as part of the collective left him scarred for life, and was a crucial part of the emotional and mental turmoil that led him to quit his studies and become what could only be described as a modern-day hermit, living off disability benefits. Yes, my brother worked on his own projects as part of the collective, as your webpage mentions, however, the bulk of his time was spent doing uncredited work for his professors, under repeated threats of expulsion (from the collective and from UC San Diego), being thus forced to neglect his studies, sleep, nutrition and to completely disregard his social life, which led to his beloved girlfriend of 6 years, Kirstin, to leave him. During this period, every time we met, I could see my brother transforming more and more into a shell of a man, and I still blame myself for not pushing him harder to leave while he could. He finally broke down in March of 2019, and came to me for advice, telling me all about being overworked for sometimes 60 hours a week (all the while being expected to continue normal Bachelor’s studies), running errands for professors, replacing them in their work and all the while suffering extreme verbal and emotional abuse. We went together with his case to the UC San Diego administration, which launched an internal investigation which was outrageously closed without conclusion three months later (until which point the faculty members involved, whom I cannot name due to an ongoing lawsuit, were on PAID leave). Of course, the moment we went to the administration, my brother was kicked from the group on grounds of “lack of participation”, which further aggravated his distress.

I am thus writing to request that you remove the shameful slander of my brother on your webpage, or expect legal action.  

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It’s July in the studio of the Call Mark Video Collective, on University Avenue, and the fan is doing little more than pushing the hot air around. The walls are crowded with post-its, protest posters, and a mural that was supposed to have been finished last fall. Four members of the collective—Fern, Marisol, Claire, and Ben—sit around a large table in the middle of the room, kept dark. On the table, is an Amiga-4000 connected to two monitors squeezed together on top of an aluminum protective cover. The two monitors show different scenes of footage, while the Amiga-4000 displays Video Toaster, an editing software. Around the computer set-up: piles of hard drives, tape decks, stacks of tapes, and cables. Fern, Marisol, Claire, and Ben are looking at the render bar in Video Toaster, waiting for it to fill up. They remain silent until…

 

— I bet that if we connected all these cables, we could stretch this one long cable from here to Tijuana — says Fern, in boredom.

No one answers until Marisol starts talking, her feet dropping from the table as she sits up straight.

— That’s actually not a bad idea. We stopped talking ideas. We stopped talking about so many things… Remember we were invited to do a project with the border? They called you one or two times asking about it, right, Claire?

Claire nods. Ben asks:

— Who?

Claire whispers:

— The Border Art Workshop.

Marisol says simultaneously, in the same heartily tone from before:

— Taller de Arte Fronterizo. We could propose this project—connecting our computer with a computer across the border with cables. But that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m saying: What are we doing?

Fern glances behind and points at the whiteboard near the entrance. It says, in black marker: “WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING?” No one’s erased it, and no one’s addressed it either, until Fern, now:

— So it was you?

— Yes. It was, — Marisol confirms.

Ben asks:

— And why the “even”?

Marisol, sporting an uneven haircut, points to it, ironically, and everyone giggles. Claire, with her very short, evenly cut hair, gestures to hers, and they all laugh.

Marisol leans forward, speaking:

— That’s actually a good question, Ben. I think the “even” points to something else. It feels like we’re not doing the things that are the right things for us.

The render bar completes. The video of the New Creation Gospel Choir starts playing, filling the room with the choir’s voices—soaring, fraying against a building tension. For months, nearly all of the collective’s efforts had been devoted to recording and editing tapes for the Gospel Choir. With little room for critique and creation, many members had drifted away.

Marisol’s voice cuts through the music:

— I feel like we’re shrinking, on a symbolic level.

She turns to Ben:

— Please don’t take this personally, Ben. I know how hard you’ve worked for this. But I have to ask: Is this what we want to do? Because I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s not what I want.

Neither Ben nor anyone responds. The clip ends with a long high note from the choir. Ben presses the space key and plays the footage again.

 

— This cut isn’t working, — Claire mutters, rewinding the tape after it plays through.

Fern chews on a pen cap, staring at the screen as if it’s accusing them of something. Marisol leans against the doorway, arms crossed, her face shadowed.

Ben breaks the silence that had settled back in:

— Marisol, we’ve always talked about creating and sustaining our artistic practice outside the art system’s usual channels. I, at least, believe in this project. It connects us with a community through a social economy aligned with our ethics. It’s not the ’80s anymore. The art scene has calcified—no edge, just galleries courting tourists and money. The off-spaces are broke, don’t you see?

Ben’s voice rises slightly:

— With the New Creation Gospel Choir, we have a chance to contribute to a third space. Something real, not merely theoretical. Listen to how they weave personal and collective histories into their music. The songs speak of motherhood, labor, resilience, and the quiet power of faith—not faith as dogma, but as an assertion of dignity in a world that over and over again denies it.

Marisol shakes her head, her tone soft but firm:

— But, Ben, we could be a third space ourselves instead of latching onto someone else’s. Isn’t it strange to latch onto a discourse that’s already established, and quite strong? And maybe, in doing so, we’re misusing it. If we’re not only doing this for the money—and this is the first time I’m really thinking about this—then maybe we shouldn’t be doing it at all.

— That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it, — Ben counters. — I’m just responding to your point about us shrinking on a symbolic level. If I weren’t spending so much time working on what pays our bills… —

Claire interrupts, sharply:

— We are working, Ben. WE. Chill out.

Ben presses on:

— … I would’ve taken a pen and written “WE ARE SAVING, money!, for the publication,” under your “WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING?” 

He pauses, then continues:

— It’s meant to be a testament to everything we’ve built. Fourteen years of projects.

Marisol shakes her head once again:

— That, Ben, feels more like an eulogy than anything else. That’s for the past, Ben. I’m asking about the future.

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From April 6th, 2012 to April 26th, 2012, Claire Nakamura presents Dumbo’s Magic Feather, an animated video, at Artists Space in New York. The work follows Dumbo, the Disney character, flying over landscapes that shift between aerial shots and digitally generated textures that intermittently dissolve in the imagery of the internet. Dumbo’s flight, as precarious as it is fantastical, hinges on the belief that a single feather grants the ability to stay aloft.

 

The fragile balances at play in the video work draw attention to the politics of movement in the contemporary world. The video’s interplay between geographic and virtual spaces echoes the realities of modern travel and forced displacement, where the ability to cross borders often depends on arbitrary permissions and symbolic markers. These fragile and conditional permissions underscore the uneven distribution of freedom of movement, where certain bodies—deemed legitimate—are allowed to traverse, while others face surveillance, detention, or immobility. Dumbo’s Magic Feather reframes flight not as freedom, but as a tenuous privilege contingent on systems of control and belief.

 

The video reflects Nakamura’s ongoing collaboration with the Call Mark Video Collective, a group whose early queer-media practices significantly influenced experimental video art. The digital landscapes in the piece, which include Instagram scrolling and YouTube rabbit holes, recreate a context that feels indebted to Call Mark’s earlier critiques of media. Yet, the work resists collapsing into pure self-referentiality, grounding itself instead in the immediacy of its visual impact and identification. The animation unfolds across five screens, enveloping viewers in a media ecosystem that is as seductive as it is overwhelming.

 

The tension between Nakamura’s technical precision and Call Mark’s historically process-driven imperfection opens a dialogue about the nature of their collaborative process. What, then, does Call Mark’s signature add to the video, beyond perhaps its technical skill? Nakamura’s work suggests that the answer lies not in what is visible in the video, but in its absences and the tensions between past and present practices. Albeit apologetically corny, returning to the narrative of the video, what flies is the appealing visual, while the thread that informs Call Mark Video Collective’s signature remains as fragile as the feather keeping Dumbo afloat. Which does, nonetheless, sustain flight.

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On the day school started, I fell in love. 

 

It wasn’t the first time—it felt like it. Every love feels like the first. But it wasn’t. Not for me. And yet, it felt like it was—the first time.

 

I made many drawings of you. Many drawings of hearts. We were in the same class. You sat in front of me. I could see you, but you couldn’t see me. I don’t want to let go of this fantasy, you can laugh, I won’t mind.

 

One afternoon, our eyes finally met. My heart raced. I froze, unable to move, unable to think. The taste of beer on my lips, and on your moustache. It was like opening a pirate’s treasure chest. Huge, terrifying, ready to bite. Maybe we wanted to be bitten. And we were, that night, and many others.

 

The other night, facing the sea, I remembered this story. You wouldn’t believe what I saw—THE PIRATES ARE COMING. The taste of beer on my lips and on your moustache. I smelled the smell of you. I smiled, watching the sunrise rise.

That night, not the pirates’ night, but our first night out, everything felt like a hunting scene painted on a (every) wall. A river. The dark. Maybe the fireflies were already glowing. Life would be easier if we were monsters. If I were one, we’d see better in the dark. They would tell horror stories about us. And I’d be even hairier than I already am.

 

Do you remember where we were? What happened? It was late. You held my hand, pressed it with a sweet pain, then even harder. We walked through the deserted streets at dawn.

 

I imagined us at home, moving through the world with open hearts. We sat by the riverbank for a while, tracing the ground with sticks. I watched our calloused hands, your hairy nape, the roughness of your back, your thick beard, your messy hair. After midnight, the beasts began to howl. Each howl chilled our blood. And we laughed. It felt good.

 

You could hear the beasts grinding their teeth.

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JOIN US - FAQ

 

HOW TO JOIN THE CALL MARK VIDEO COLLECTIVE?

A straightforward form is available at the student hall of UC San Diego’s Visual Arts Department, as well as at a few other art schools and spaces in the San Diego area. Based on our experience, submitting the printed form is the easiest way for new members to join the collective. Every year, we receive between five and ten applications via the aforementioned method, as well as additional inquiries through various other channels—there’s no set way to contact us. The form is meant as a facilitator rather than a bureaucracy. We work hard to avoid—while acknowledging the inevitability of some formality—turning the process into a formal application. We also strive to avoid positioning ourselves as a selection committee.

 

WHAT IS ASKED IN THE FORM?

The questions vary slightly each year, but there are certain standard questions. One application we received years ago (which we have permission to share) included the following responses to some of the most common questions:

-Name: Finley (he provided only his first name)

-Pronouns: He/Him/His

-Practice: Photography + Filmmaking

-Project you could be interested in developing or proposing with Call Mark Video Collective: Producing photographic statements = staging photography to create a photographic archive for the Call Mark Video Collective. The aim of the staged documentation is to create more real than real documentation, which, for various reasons, I’ve heard from both current and former members, has been very scarce across many generations of the collective.

 

DID FINLEY JOIN THE CALL MARK VIDEO COLLECTIVE?

Yes. Finley was welcomed into the Call Mark Video Collective. After an in-person conversation and a quick tour of our studio on University Avenue, he decided to join and was provided with a table. In addition to committing to help with some weekend workshops, Finley began developing his staged photography project. All members of the collective agreed to be photographed, and Finley mentioned the idea of possibly involving actors for certain shoots.

 

DO MEMBERS GET PAID? HOW WAS FINLEY SUPPOSED TO FINANCE HIS PROJECT?

No, members are not paid simply for being part of the Call Mark Video Collective. However, they can earn money by participating in paid projects the Collective takes on. Members may also propose and pursue their own projects using the Collective’s resources, potentially generating income. All profits generated through the Collective’s infrastructure contribute to the Production Fund. Access to the Production Fund is contingent on unanimous approval by active members and the fund’s liquidity. Finley could request to use the Production Fund to finance his project. Alternatively, he could produce his photographic series using only resources indiscriminately available to all members, such as equipment, or even leverage the Collective’s name to negotiate a free hotel room for a photoshoot, for example.

There is no membership fee required to join the Collective. Since profit is not the collective’s main focus, a number of the projects we engage in are unpaid. On the other hand, unpaid labor is also not our focus. Therefore, financial arrangements are always discussed on a case-by-case basis.

 

WHAT DOES BEING A MEMBER ENTAIL?

Some members, including Finley, use the Call Mark Video Collective as mule for their concepts—and that’s not a problem. Finley attended a few of the weekend workshops he was meant to assist with, though he was often late. As part of his project, he organized a photo shoot in a hotel room, explaining that it would be part of a road trip series inspired by the collective’s early days in the ’80s. His goal was to document the collective’s early days—a period that was indeed particularly scarcely recorded. The group valued this scarcity, tho, as it left room for the rumours that circulated within the San Diego art scene. Stories of Call Mark’s beginnings hinted at a rebellious spirit: the first studio allegedly built with equipment stolen from UC, a patchwork of furniture scavenged from family attics and garages, and the so-called “sex room,” said to have been more experimental than the editing room. One enduring legend involved the porn films the collective produced in the mid-’80s. With their cyberpunk aesthetics, these films later became part of an ontological exhibition in Los Angeles. The sex tapes touched on subjects like the democratization of information and feminist media studies. These stories, still circulating in San Diego’s art scene, cemented the collective’s reputation for blurring boundaries and igniting critical dialogue. Finley, however, made commitments he didn’t truly wish to fulfill, like assisting at weekend workshops. His lack of participation left professors and workshop attendees without assistance, ultimately harming the artistic and educational process. This outcome underscores a crucial point for potential members: only commit to what you truly want to pursue. The Call Mark Video Collective encourages members to embrace freedom, using (or misusing) the collective as a resource without being bound by obligations they don’t genuinely wish to fulfill.

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There was a small office somewhere, and there were three or four of them, and one of them at least had long hair and wore a bandana. I remember the bandana didn’t go over the hair—it went under the hair. I think he said it was so it didn’t get in the way of his work, which never made sense to me. He had this brown, greyish hair, and he didn’t wash it a lot. They drank a little too much. I was surprised when you said they were into anti-globalization activities. I don’t remember much from those days, but at some point, I got quite involved with people protesting the monetary fund, advocating for local culture and solidarity, and standing against multinationals. Lots of street protests, street parties, events. Involved with all kinds of communities—anarchists, communists. For some reason, I always imagined those guys a bit more isolated from all of that. The office was very grey and a bit dirty. Once or twice, being a woman, I might have felt a bit uncomfortable with them when it was just the guys. Mostly, I remember the guys. My testimony might be very biased. The office was very grey and dirty—I know I already said that, but it was. If they were in Europe, they’d probably live off state money, unemployment, or something. But here in the US, I never really understood how they paid for their livelihood. They lived very modestly, of course. Occasionally, they did something for the city—like preparing a stage somewhere. Nothing artistic. I can close my eyes and picture three of them there, the guys, moving in this funny way—kind of hopping, like they’d taken too many drugs and now had a bit of a coordination problem. Usually, they wore black T-shirts—nothing complicated. And one of them dressed sort of like an Oxford professor. No one bought it, obviously. Sometimes, he’d sleep on the couch in the office, still in his suit, with his feet on the coffee table. I tried working with them once. I invited them to a project because they had this very naïve perspective on things, and they could deliver a video. But you had to give them the materials well in advance because they were a bit slow. In the end, we couldn’t match our calendars, and I think I just did the video work myself. I could imagine visiting them now, having a long talk that’s very fun. For an entire evening, they’d mansplain all the things they’ve done, and I’d sit there thinking, “God, this is such great stuff—why haven’t I heard of it?” But I’d know the answer. You know the answer. They’re like when you pour a beer into a cup and leave it sitting there too long—it doesn’t taste so good anymore. It’s not their fault. I stand with them.

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In 1995, Ben Kinmont stepped away from the galleries that represented him seeking a clearer understanding of his work. He began writing and compiling project descriptions, editing them into publications, and mailing these publications to friends. After a conversation with one of these correspondent-with friends, Kinmont realised that he could also create publications about others—particularly those whose works had been forgotten or were accessible only through their notebooks and archives. This was the beginning of Antinomian Press.

 

Based in Sebastopol, CA, Ben Kinmont welcomed some Call Mark Video Collective members while on a road trip north, stopping in Sebastopol on their way to the wake of Song Wong Bourbeau, an influential Bay Area-based photographer whose work explored identity and heritage. Over dinner and wine, Kinmont and the Collective discussed their works, and by the end of the evening, the Call Mark Video Collective was invited to have a project description published by Antinomian Press.

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Cable Publishing (1997)

San Diego and Tijuana, despite being so close, are quite far from one another. Between them, lies a physical border, the concept of nationhood, systemic racism, and linguistic barriers. The internet, while radically changing how information is distributed, underscores the differences between Mexico and the U.S.A. The Call Mark Video Collective is sharing a selection of digital zines via a cable that crosses the border between the U.S.A. and Mexico; connecting the headquarters of the Call Mark Video Collective and the Taller de Arte Fronterizo is a cable that invites visitors to bring their portable personal computers to the Mexican institution, plug in, and download the zines into their computers. The cable connecting both countries is about 19 miles (30 kilometres) long and crosses the border illegally.

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Dear Sir/Madam,

 

My name is Stephen Fleischer. I am a librarian for the Heritage Park Regional Library in Irvine, California. Our collection houses some material which may be of interest to you - original documentation of the Call Mark Video Collective’s 2002 piece, “LUNCH FOR TERRORISM”, donated to the library from the personal collection of Simon B. Creigh. Due to lack of space, the library is currently in the process of removing this and other materials from our video art collection.

You are welcome to come by and receive these documents during our working hours (Sun: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm; Mon - Thu: 10:00 am - 8:00 pm; Fri - Sat: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm).

 

Kindest regards,

Stephen Fleischer

Head Librarian, Heritage Park Regional Library

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Dear Call Mark Video Collective,

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First of all, congratulations on your fantastic artwork exhibited at this year’s Afgang at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. It’s a strong conceptual piece with beautifully simple setup. Definitely worth a revisit on my part!

It just came to my attention that my previous email somehow never reached you. Still, I want to express my gratitude for your amazing work documenting my dream wedding on video. Everyone is looking forward to seeing what you’ve captured! I’d love to include the video documentation as part of my exhibited work, and I’m planning the first screening for May 21, as part of Afgang Live. Would you like to be part of the editing process, or would you prefer to deliver raw material? Also, are you interested in contributing to the performative aspect of the screening?

Meanwhile, something spontaneous is happening tomorrow.

Inspired (or rather, uninspired) by the recent art reviews of the exhibition—which echoed little more than the initial premise of In Search of Serendipity: You May Kiss the Bride—I’ll be conducting a very short piece titled:

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            “Press Release: Balcony Scene”

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During this brief event (approx. 5–10 minutes), artist will release butterflies, born within the artwork, into the exhibition space. Each butterfly embodies a note with a memory, celebrating cycles and re-creation. These butterflies were fully present during the Wedding Ceremony inside the exhibition space and have, until now, remained so.

Due to the delicate and unpredictable nature of these newborn artists, it was impossible to plan this in advance. Still, we’re hoping someone from your collective might be able to jump in and record this small but important piece of the work.

We’re aiming to do it tomorrow at around 13:00 on the balcony at Charlottenborg. It would be wonderful if you could catch a short video of the moment.

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Thanks again for everything!

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Looking forward,

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Katja Crevar

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It’s not been easy to talk to you. Also, it’s not been easy to talk to me (delicate). I’m stuck against the current or without reception on the sand of the beach, looking at the sea and the sky, and one becomes one; the other, the other. Call Mark Video Collective is very blue, ain’t it? Thinking all the time, thinking of you running, as I am that one that miaus, that one that surfs as you know the location of poetry, especially for me. I owe you an audio message. I owe you a writing encounter so I can become less repetitive. I’ve been taking Portuguese classes lately, and at night, sunglasses, speaking English. Was cosmology the word? Was it key? I already don’t remember much, and at the same time, I want to forget them all. I’ve been dealing with it all in dreams. Here I am with you, kissing you with my tongue, in the 40-degree green room, are you enjoying it? I’ve always loved you, and I hope that our affair doesn’t end here. I want to stick with you. Here and there, your voice, portatif.

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I learned about the Call Mark Video Collective 

through my friend Vinícius Maffei,

who recently collaborated with them on a video piece of his.

And his description of the collective caught me off guard,

because it’s such a far-reaching, widespread thing.

And it’s rare for artist groups to last so long.

They usually band together for a couple of years and disappear.

People lose engagement.

 

It feels like the Call Mark Video Collective has changed a lot,

and thrived and survived,

yet I had never heard of it.

 

I know I’m not the biggest media art person

or so connected to video,

or this kind of technologically motivated art in general,

but again,

we are talking about something with over 40 years of history

and apparently over 300 members or collaborators.

 

I should have seen it

at least in some bios,

in some wall text,

some exhibition.

 

But I don’t have that recollection.

So I decided to look into it.

 

But then,

I’m also a lazy researcher.

Let’s say, I can dig into a library and find what I need to find,

but it’s really not, for me,

not a pleasant process.

Archives are really not my thing.

 

So here’s what I decided to do.

I decided to call Mark.

 

Any Mark that I know.

 

I don’t know many Marks, it turns out.

I looked on my Facebook and I only had two Marks listed.

 

One of them wasn’t even a Mark.

It was a Lars Mark, or something.

Mark was his second name,

so I didn’t call that guy.

I wish I had phone books

or any other device that would give me a fast, fat list of Marks

with their contacts.

 

But I still had the other guy on my Facebook

Mark Tholander.

 

That’s a Danish guy.

The first guy was Danish too,

the one I didn’t call.

 

Mark Tholander is an artist.

I’ve heard his name before

but I actually have no idea who he is.

I know he’s an artist, that’s what I know.

 

I looked him up online,

and it was easy to find his phone number.

 

I briefly presented myself,

I said that I was doing research about a video collective

called Call Mark Video Collective,

and that I wondered if he had something to say about it,

due to their homonymity?

 

That I didn’t really know where or how to start,

so I figured I would role-play researcher.

Asking Marks, as my methodology.

 

That’s what I told him.

 

And he started laughing.

This guy tells me that it’s not the first time he’s been asked about it.

 

Mark, you are such a good sport.

 

Mark was laughing his ass off.

And then I was laughing on the other side of the phone, too.

 

I think he’s happy with the relative anonymity

that the collective creates around the name Mark.

 

Anyone could be a Mark.

 

I don’t know.

I don’t know, yeah, it started as this silly game,

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Fellow Markers, collectivists, and some people I call friends...

 

This is a formal cessation of any and all associated activities between me and the so-called “Call Mark Video Collective.” This parting has been made necessary by the cumulative divergences between my own agenda and those of fellow members, which I now consider irreconcilable.

 

For the sake of those still salvageable relations—and in dedication and respect to the collective’s work—this rupture is, I believe, the best course of action.

 

My position as a founding member, actively engaged with core operations for over two decades, grants me acute awareness of the fragility imparted by this decision.

 

If diversity of opinions, backgrounds, and capabilities has been a central aspiration of the Collective’s spirit, the organisation has, at least from my perspective and experience, crystallised, in an age that, perhaps even more than in our Reagan years, demands stronger political action against forces I lack the words to not simply describe them as evil.

 

And perhaps the worst part is that I find “us” in denial of our fall into irrelevance, sustained by a mode of operation that weakens our ability to meet diversity beyond resounding voices of vacuous idealism.

 

Self-referentiality is no replacement for the concrete needs of insertion within a context that, even at the edge of invention, has some friction with social reality as a requirement, for a healthy praxis.

From its inception, “Call Mark” has been driven by utopian verve, bizarro intellectualism, resourcefulness of means, and our own dreadfully delightful brand of crafty conviviality.

 

But time and again, I have witnessed our passions for each other muddle our attempts at relating with any other other. In light of last September’s events, this tendency finally reached its limit of sustainability for me.

 

These lines are written as an assurance of my confidence in and favour toward the remaining members and collectivists, for whom I wish nothing if not sheer fortitude and will.

 

The Collective has survived plentiful turbulence and hiatuses, countless marriages and at least one funeral, media vendetta, scathing reviews, a long list of successful openings and failed interventions, failures from which I have most profited.

 

This resilience alone is reason for my admiration.

 

Ben Moore​​​​​