| |
What compelled you to make this piece? How does this work address issues that are important to you or close to your heart?
I have always been fascinated by joke telling and humor -- but especially
the form of the joke. To get a joke, it has to be immediate and
unself-conscious. At the same time, jokes make fun of people, social
groups, body parts, and lifestyles. They are insulting. And we lose
control when we laugh. There's a certain freedom there and an intellectual
spark that I was interested in examining. Both from the human angle of
women joketellers and the art historical angle. Marcel Duchamp is one of
our most inventive humorists -- he is sexualized, off-color, and defiant in
the humor used in his art production. THE VISION MACHINE attempts to
combine my interests in Duchamp, the meaning of joketelling, and how it all
relates to women.
 |
| From THE VISION MACHINE. |
What about access to the tools of production and post-production?
Being a film/video artist is difficult in terms of funding and
distribution, especially. There is a lot of pressure on the media artist to
make entertainment (or to a lesser extent entertaining documentaries).
Audiences have different expectations of film/video than they do about
painting or poetry, for example, because film has a mass culture appeal and
popular history. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a Hollywood blockbuster
as much as the next person, but there are many kinds of media production
which are valuable. There does seem to be more and more attention lately
to artistic, theoretical, and personal media in the art galleries and I
think that's positive but a move in the opposite direction of television.
 |
| From THE VISION MACHINE. |
Why did you become a film/video artist/maker?
I never really painted or did traditional art forms but was always
interested in art and art history when I was in school. It seemed obvious
that creative work was important, that what's left around for the future generations to understand
the past was the art. I remember, coming home from a trip to Europe when I
was a teenager, having studied the remnants of the Medieval and Renaissance
cultures, I knew that I wanted to be an artist but make art that related
to my historical moment -- and that to me was film and video.
|
|
