Double, a 10:25-minute single channel video work by Kerry Tribe, addresses an issue with which most human beings have grappled at some point: how the world perceives and interprets them, their lives and their work. Placing a call for actresses that fit her own physical description, Tribe received photographic head shots in the mail with resumes. After scanning through them, she invited individual actresses for auditions. During the auditions, Tribe would talk about herself as a video artist and reflect on subjects ranging from her first impressions of Los Angeles to her background, family, and even current projects.
After giving each actress a bit of personal history, she would turn the camera on the actress and ask her to assume the identity of Tribe. The actress would then be requested to describe what it was like to be a recently transplanted New York video artist attending graduate school at UCLA and to explain the concepts of Tribe's work, armed with just the brief, unscripted knowledge the actresses were able to glean after their conversation with the artist.
The result is a series of documentary-style monologues giving us raw, sometimes stereotypical, perceptions of being an artist and the insecurities and struggle involved. Though Tribe never appears in the video, the viewer is somehow left with an indelible impression of an actual encounter with the artist.