Clark Buckner is a cultural producer with more than twenty-years of professional experience, curating exhibitions and screenings, producing film and video projects, publishing books and articles, advising collectors, and teaching courses on art, philosophy, film/video, cultural criticism, and curatorial practice. He currently serves as Director of Telematic Media Arts, a black box gallery, production company, and art book publisher in San Francisco’s SoMa District, where he focuses specifically on time-based arts, screen culture, and art’s intersection with technology.
His recent curatorial and production projects include: When Dreams Are Realty, a quadraphonic sound-art installation by leading Indigenous-American artist, Cristobal Martinez. The Friend, a nine-channel video installation by second-generation video artist John Sanborn, featuring actor John Cameron Mitchell. And The Archive to Come, a large group show of time-based works by more than 50 international artists, co-curated w/ new media powerhouse Carla Gannis in response to Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, and the crisis of the republic.
Over the last few years, he has collaborated with or otherwise contributed to exhibitions, screenings, and events at Art+Climate Action (SF), California College of Art (SF), Cyland Media Art Lab (Lithuania), Gray Area (SF), Minnesota Street Foundation (SF), New Inc/New Museum (NY), Onassis ONX (NY), Perez Art Museum (Miami), Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation (SF), Transfer Gallery (Miami/NY), Videoformes (Clermont-Ferrand), and ZKM (Karlsruhe).
Along with perennial catalog essays – on Carla Gannis, Peter Burr, Orphan Drift, Kal Spelletich, and Contemporary Chinese Video Art, among others – his publications on art, philosophy, film/video, and curatorial practice include Apropos of Nothing: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, and the Coen Brothers (SUNY U.P.), and the co-authored collection Styles of Piety: Practicing Philosophy After the Death of God (Fordham, U.P.), as well as articles in Afterimage; Art Journal; Culture, Theory, Critique; Art Review; Bomb Magazine; NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism; The Bay Guardian; and SFMoMA’s Open Space. Through Telematic’s publishing arm, he also has edited and released books by or about Lauren Lee McCarthy, Leila Weefur, Caroline Sinders, Contemporary African Video Art, and Porpentine Charity Heartscape, among others.
For many years, he taught philosophy, art history, cultural criticism, and curatorial practice in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. Before that, he taught in the Philosophy Departments at Mills College and UC Santa Cruz. He co-founded The Blue Studio, an arts community and workspace; and he served as Director/Curator of the project space, Mission 17. He plays bass guitar in the power pop trio, Super Fragile California, and composes sound scores for the dance company, Jennifer Perfilio / Movement Works (JPMW). He serves as Secretary on the Board of the San Francisco Art Dealers Association and has a PhD in Continental Philosophy and Psychoanalytic Critical Theory from Vanderbilt University.
Contact: clark@tttelematiccc.com
Insta: @tttelematiccc