Shelter began in 1989 as a performance-in-installation project. The objective was to create a temporal enclosure defined by projected slide animation. The images were created by physical collage and optical manipulation. The slides were then "animated" to music on analog dissolve control. A four-track audio cassette contained both the slide cues and the audio.

In two years the project grew from a 30-minute solo to an hourlong, four-performers piece; from just two slide projectors to seven (four for "scenery" plus three to light the performers). These early versions included site-specific outdoor installation-performances.

After a break in 1992-95 (to work on Tokyo Rose), I resumed production on Shelter in 1996. Two thousand new slides were shot to an entirely new soundtrack.

An exhibition was scheduled for December 1999 in Tokyo. When there was no funding for travel, I decided to put Shelter's performance elements on video.

We shot the video in my 10' x 13' living room over the summer of 1999, premiering the slides-and-video version at the Lab in San Francisco in November before the Tokyo show. In December 2000, the double digital-video installation Shelter 9 was premiered at Monaco Dance Forum, followed by exhibitions in Paris, Berlin (Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, 2001) and in Glasgow (New Territories Festival, 2002).