Women Cinemakers both aesthetically pleasing and to a broader non-Belgian audience. As for camera setup, my gear was simple but effective: a Canon 70D, two lenses and my cell phone. I feel like cinematography is just as much about framing, not just the tools. We have appreciated the way your work is capable of conveying such captivating storytelling, providing the result of your artistic research with consistent cinematographic quality. How did you develope your style in order to achieve such captivating results? I am very much influenced by surrealism, absurdism and symbolism. And when I make a film, I look to incorporate these art movements as much as possible, hence the sometimes very dramatic and captivating shots. When Charlie surrenders to Nostalgia, I could have created that particular scene by shooting an empty drawer, alluding to her traveling, or even moving back to Belgium. But I chose not to do that, first of all because it is almost too literal, and secondly, because nostalgia is a feeling that is not that easily resolved, on the contrary. It is a sentiment that tends to linger and seep into one’s soul. For that reason, I wanted to depict nostalgia as something bigger, a person even who patiently waits for Charlie to surrender,
Women Cinemakers powerless to the almighty power of . We have deeply appreciated your approach to narrative and the way you have balanced analytical research of the characters of Charlie and Nicki and the emotional aspect of the storytelling: what was your preparation with actors in terms of rehearsal? In particular, do you like spontaneity or do you prefer to meticolously schedule every details of your shooting process? Crucial in my creative process is defining the mood. Hence, I do research on what it is I want to convey and create several mood boards per character. A second step is setting up a shot list in which I incorporate different angles and inserts that I will combine in the editing process. It is absolutely vital to have an idea of how I will or would like to edit a scene and try to be as detailed as possible. When the time has come to shoot, I make sure to be flexible enough and develop other ideas/ angles on the spot. As I very often work with natural light, it is sometimes hard to predict what something will look like on camera. Therefor, flexibility and the willingness to forego certain ideas, are key to developing a film, I think. I don’t rehearse a lot, for most scenes have little or no dialogue. And I always love to see what the actors bring to the table, . In that sense, I’m very open to improvisation, especially during the first takes. If I notice the actor is lost, I step in and give meticulous directions. If there’s no dialogue at all, I usually know exactly how I want to convey what I have in mind. In that case, I will literally tell the actor how to . Sound plays a crucial role in your work and we have highly appreciated the way it provides the footage of with such a and a bit capable of evoking such in the viewers, challenging their perceptual categories: why did you decided to include such rhythmic commentary? And how would you consider the relationship between moving images and sound? I consider sound as a protagonist in my films. For Belgiac, I wanted to step away from sound design that is typically associated with nostalgia or melancholy. In order to have an audience that is just as much submerged by nostalgia as Charlie, I wanted to create something urgent, threatening and very much in contrast with the quieter scenes. The music had to represent confusion, disconnectedness and the hypnotizing force of
A still from
Women Cinemakers longing for something that has long gone. It also had to sound outlandish enough so that it was clear that the trips happen to Charlie privately, in her fantasy. The cuts of the trip montages as I call them, were metric, i.e. cut to the rhythm of the music. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that " ": how do you consider the relation between of the ideas you aim to communicate and of creating your artworks? My physical presence very much influences the actor’s performance. When I decided to have Charlie stand against a wall and move the camera only a few inches away from her, I knew the actor would tap into claustrophobic feelings more easily. My aim was not just for the audience to feel ‘entrapped’, I needed Leah (Charlie) to experience it in order to translate it to the big screen. Of course, when you direct, you want your actors to go to the place you want them to roam. Sometimes, this implies using words, but I easily slip into their shoes and ‘show’ them what I expect. My films are so
Women Cinemakers visceral and visual, I don’t shy away from having the actors literally depict my needs. Sometimes, I feel like a sculptor, molding their faces into the film. When I am in doubt about what I want from a scene or actor, I sometimes film it beforehand, in private, with me in front of the camera. That way, I sense what the actor is struggling with or what doesn’t feel right, and subsequently give better directions. We like the way your intimate created entire scenarious out of to between their epiphanic journey and the viewers' emotional sphere. What are you hoping will trigger in the spectatorship? My main goal was to evoke the multitude of emotions, triggered by homesickness and nostalgia in a broader sense of the word. Although often romanticized and represented as a gentle and harmless state of mind, nostalgia can be destructive and blind its victims from future perspectives, until all they are left with is a past. Belgiac is also an answer to the question I often got when I had just moved to the States: “What do you miss most?” I remember choking up, and churn out a series of nouns, like ‘fries’, ‘beer’, ‘cosiness’, ‘the
people’,… And those words never made a lot of sense, not to me or the person I was talking to. I thought to myself. So I made Belgiac. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in cinema and contemporary art scene, in general. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? As a woman who makes films and is building up her career, I’m regularly exposed to sexism. And I often make videos about it, like How to become a successful cinematographer, or C’mon honey, give us a smile. But in a world that is still dominated by men, there are more and more initiatives that empower women. At some point, we will reach equality. And the best way for (female) filmmakers to make this happen, is to stay conscious about the problem yet at the same time roam freely and keep creating, regardless of the gender we identify Women Cinemakers interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers interview with. One way of doing that, is to work mainly with women on film projects, like I do. Femininity should be celebrated and used as a catalyst, not an inhibitor that ties us down to And what I want most, is to be judged for my films, not my vagina. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Eva. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Currently, I’m wrapping up my second short film (working title). It’s a montage in which we observe a woman conversing with her deceased partner. will be a visual feast of raw emotions, too delicate to be revealed, too urgent to be hidden. If we could openly talk about grief and break the taboo, what would it sound and look like? An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
is a mesmerizing film by multidisciplinary artist Joy Meyer: marked out with carefully orchestrated photography, this film is a stimulating meditation on the relationship of place to human emotion. This captivating film offers an emotionally charged visual experience, inviting the viewers to unveil the ubiquitous beauty hidden into the details of our everyday life experience. Meyer's artistic research creates connections between the history of art, epistemology, technology, and feminism to explore the metaphysics of love and longing, and we are particularly pleased to An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] introduce our readers to her captivating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Joy and welcome to : we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having graduated Phi Beta Kappa from University of Virginia, with Distinction completing a BA in Studio Art and Art History, you nurtured your education with an MFA in Studio Arts, that you received from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your Joy Meyer Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Hillsborough, North Carolina (United States) The Wilderness is a meditation on the relationship of place to human emotion. As we revisit a site, our standing memory becomes scripted with new memory, in this view a site can become a depository of stray feelings that accumulate but simultaneously dissipate.
Joy Meyer Portrait by Lindsay Metivier
Women Cinemakers direct the trajectory of your artistic research? Hello and thank you for the invitation to talk about my work with you. I have to say that my first major introduction to Fine Art was in Houston. Before then I had had limited exposure to art and mainly grew up watching American movies on VHS tapes. I was in my early 20s and I was visiting a friend’s family for the holidays. I went to Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts and encountered the James Turrell piece called The Light Inside. I stood inside the installation for ages, watching the light ebb from magenta, to violet, to blue. It seemed to match my heartbeat and my breath. After that experience I became obsessed with art. It was like falling in love for the first time. I went on to study painting and drawing at University of Virginia. I majored in both Art History and Studio, which included a studio program but also a rigorous academic pathway. I had the experience of taking a graduate level art history seminar that met at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC every Friday. Once a week we students would all board the train and ride together to the Museum. Which houses Mark Rothko’s paintings in his own room which he helped to design and curate with Duncan Phillips. I spent many hours in that small room with Rothko’s giant paintings. To me they glowed like television sets or projected, emanating fields of color. At that time I also took this incredible Film Noir class which greatly influenced my framing, my camera work, and thinking about agency in film.
Installation view of Fictional Desires, 2018 one through seven of nine channel video installation + faux-fur rugs (front) and Five to Seven Years Depending on Use, 2018 custom-made, magenta, neon sign from artist’s original drawing, 24x18 inches Image courtesy of Lindsay Metivier.
Installation view of Fictional Desires, 2018 one through seven of nine channel video installation + faux-fur rugs (front) and Five to Seven Years Depending on Use, 2018 custom-made, magenta, neon sign from artist’s original drawing, 24x18 inches Image courtesy of Lindsay Metivier.
Women Cinemakers Both of these early experiences largely influence my work. I make paintings about things I cannot say outloud and I make video work which ruminates on these moments trapped in time. Painting is more related to the physical body and video is about the lived body in time. You are a versatile artist and your practice is marked out with such stimulating features, and includes painting and drawing, video, and performance: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating approach? How do you select a medium in order to explore a particular theme? As a beginning artist I was first drawn to painting and drawing. Even though looking back at these early experiences I was exposed to cinema, light art, and finally painting. I think what I was truly obsessed with was color and light and how these properties act on our emotions. In graduate school I started to feel the limits of what painting can express, yes I enjoyed painting’s materiality but a few things were shifting for me artistically as I began to work with video. At the time I began to work with video I was reading a few very influential texts, Mira Schorr’s A Decade of Negative Thinking and Rosalind Krauss’s essays, particularly her essay on Sculpture in The Expanded Field. Schorr’s book had me
Courtesy of Lindsay Metivier
Story of An Hour, 2016, installation view. Two-channel video with one channel sound. Silent channel is 13:01 looped and channel with sound is 9:43. These play continuously and do not synch up once started.
Fictional Desires; Eight of Cups, film still, 2018 part of the multi-channelvideo installation, Fictional Desires, 1:44 looped/silent
questioning my place in the lineage of women making art, she highlights this very interesting break around the time of Woman House where some female artists were leaving painting behind to work with performance. This had me questioning the limits of painting for self expression but also thinking about what specifically can painting express. Which of course I still believe painting can express a great deal. At this time I was also pondering Krauss’s article too about Sculpture and its many nuanced expressions. This underscored my thinking about different mediums being more suited to say what we want to say. Now I feel very strongly that the content, the medium, the materials and the message all must align. I try to teach this to my students too the importance of the alignment of material to subject. For this special edition of we have selected , a captivating film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . What has at once captured our attention of your film is the way your sapient narrative structure provides the viewers with with such an intense visual experience. While walking our readers through of , would you tell how did you develop the structure of your film? In particular, do you like or do you prefer of your shooting process? I think in all of my work I use both spontaneity and meticulous scheduling I think it depends on where you are in the project. Let me describe a little bit about how I work to tell you what I mean. Before going to art school I had a pretty serious daily morning writing habit and I wrote the first draft of a novel and at once a week at night I had a radio show called “Starlight Motel.” At a certain point in graduate school I began to feel like I needed a different way to make a work a way that could tell a non-linear story. As part of my graduate duties I was in charge of videotaping school events, the visiting artist lectures at UNC, so I constantly had this big camera in my studio. Around that time I spontaneously made a video of myself in my studio painting stretcher bars in all blue light using glow-in-the-dark paint. This was my first intuitive reach towards video. Often I will make something spontaneously but then figure out if I can replicate it or make it again but make it better. This second part requires a lot of planning. When I became serious about film and video I had to develop more structured habits. Filming outdoors requires a lot of preparation and planning especially if the site is a two-hour drive from where you live. Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers The work for my video trilogy required a great deal of planning and careful decision making. This work became a thirteen-channel video, sound, and neon installation called that premiered all together at LUMP Projects in Raleigh, NC last June 2018. One part of this piece includes seven vintage television sets all playing a different channel of the work. I wanted to time them in a way that they would always be playing a different sequence. I am always sure of how I want the light to look in the space that I am filming. I become a little bit obsessed with the light and the color of a work. The filming and editing is meticulously scheduled but there is plenty of room for spontaneity in this process. For instance, while the work is being filmed, sometimes I slip, or make a mistake, or a bird’s shadow drags across the bedspread in a window scene in a bedroom. Then I have to decide if that accidental moment is necessary, like a drip in painting, some moments are perfect and some you have to make over again. Elegantly composed, features stunning landscape cinematography and each shot is carefully orchestrated to work within the overall structure: what were your when shooting? In particular, what was your choice about camera and lens? I work with a Canon 80D Digital SLR and two lenses, an EFS 17-55mm and a Canon zoom 70-200mm. In a few of
Fictional Desires; Eight of Cups, 2018 part of the multi-channel video installation, Fictional Desires, 1:17 looped/silent
Story of An Hour, 2016, installation view. Two-channel video with one channel sound. Silent channel is 13:01 looped and channel with sound is 9:43. These play continuously and do not synch up once started. Courtesy of Lindsay Metivier
Women Cinemakers my recent videos I have been experimenting with using this zoom lens indoors and in tight corners using mirrors. This method is having this strange effect and I am still figuring it out. I have worked with other cameras but this one is light and captures brilliant amounts of color. I am experimenting with in-camera alterations too and playing with ways of manipulating the light entering the camera. I shoot with the camera on silent and for this film the sound is from a field recording made one year prior. For The Wilderness this creates a disconnect between actual time and perceived time. Shot in a rural town in Virginia, has drawn heavily from and we have highly appreciated the way you have created such insightful between the locations and the viewers' emotional sphere, brilliantly conveyed in your film: how did you select the locations and how did they affect your shooting process? This area of the country holds a lot of meaning for me. It’s like a time capsule. I moved to rural Virginia when I was a young girl to live with my grandparents. Before then I had only lived in cities. I remember my first impression of the region as being wild, lush, overgrown with trees and brush, and ferrell. Some places had old buildings overgrown with kudzu vines which appeared to pull apart old boards and return the buildings to the earth. The night sky was so bright with stars it would make me ache while I stared up at it. The noises of the region are loud with birds and
Women Cinemakers cicadas. The air in the summer smells of that metallic screen-door smell you sense right before a storm. This is the place, this county, is the location where I came of age, where I first found love and also lost love. When I returned to this region almost a decade later I found the memories there waiting for me like in the soil, in the trees, in the foliage and the rain. The Wilderness, for me contains all of these meditations. Site is a very important consideration for me for the meaning of the work. Currently all my footage is shot in Virginia. I don’t know how to describe the selection process some of it is logical and formal but the other part of the decision is more emotional. I like to film a scene that when I look at it makes me ache a little. I had a brilliant photography professor, elin o'Hara slavick, who would talk about Barthes concept of punctum something in the image that pricks you or jumps out at you. I have to believe that something also existed for the photographer not just the viewer. I think the site I am looking for has a certain amount of “punctum.” We dare say that also questions the unbalanced relationship between everyday life's experience and memory: how do you consider the role of for your artistic research? In particular, how do the details that you capture during daily life fuel your creative process? The Wilderness is a meditation on the relationship of place to human emotion. As we revisit a site, our standing interview
Women Cinemakers Wilderness, Still
A still from Women Cinemakers Wilderness, Still, courtesy of the artist
Women Cinemakers memory becomes scripted with new memory, in this view a site can become a depository of stray feelings that accumulate but simultaneously dissipate. I am also now starting to think more about the differences between lived human time and geological time. How we come into being for this brief moment but the landscape has existed for generations. In art I make the distinction between site or place and landscape. This work is about my body as it has moved through time collecting, losing, and then finding love again. This body is moving at a quicker pace than the geological time of the location. One thing that I struggled with early on is how much to reveal about my own life. How much of my work will be autobiographical. For now, I have decided that much of my work begins with a specific origin point in my life but then the work fictionalized it. One way to anchor the work in my own experience is to be extremely selective about the site where I film Deviating from traditional cinema, we daresay that reflects German photographer Andreas Gursky's statement, when he remarked that . We appreciate the way you challenge the spectatorship perceptual categories in order to create : as an artist particularly interview
Women Cinemakers interested in open narrative, how open would you like your works to be understood? This is a great question. In some of my other works I am using more than one channel of video and this allows me to open up the narrative to alternative constructions of narrative. I am interested in non linear time and telling stories that are snippets of stories which recur endlessly. I am interested in time’s relationship to the body and to memory. I am interested in the relationship between time and longing. I am interested in raising questions about knowledge and self knowledge. How we know what we know about ourselves or about the people we love. How is all of this complicated by technology. All of these considerations play out in my work in different ways. The narrative of my work is left open so the viewer feels as though they are a participant in this questioning. It's important to mention that you are also a founding member of the all-female, artist collective . Women are finding their voices in art: since Artemisia Gentileschi's times to our contemporary scene it has been a long process and it will be a long process but we have already seen lots of original awareness among women artists: we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something ' ', interview
Women Cinemakers Wilderness, Still, courtesy of the artist
Women Cinemakers Wilderness, Still, courtesy of the artist
Women Cinemakers however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. What's your view on in in this field? I am excited for the future of women in this field! I came of age in the 1990s which was the time of DIY, Riot Grrrl, zines, and girl bands. Later we called this third-wave feminism but at the time I was just living it. You didn’t need anyone to tell you how to do something you could just try to do it. At the time, as a teenager, I remember specifically having the thought that you didn’t have to go to your boyfriend’s band’s practice you could start your own band. It sounds very simple but it was a liberating thought for me as a young woman. Subverbal Collective was a project I began with five other female artists while I was still in graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill. Sadly, this project has ended after two and a half years of collaboration. However, I appreciate the lessons I learned while working in this group and so this experience has left an indelible mark upon my artistic life and practice. I am already working on future collaborations and I am planning to found a new artist collective, perhaps one for lens-based, female and female-identifying photographers, filmmakers, or digital artists. I have also recently acquired a project space that I am renovating. So, my collaborative energy is definitely being used elsewhere. Stay tuned! Over the years your works have been an internationally exhibited in several venues, including interview
the Kamloops Art Gallery, in British Columbia and at Universitet i Oslo, Norway. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to establish with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of . Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context? I am very inspired by the words of American film maker, Nathaniel Dorsky, he writes, “In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry.” In many of my works, especially the larger full-sized projections, the viewer is the one who begins to feel present in the space I am depicting. There are no actors and no visible human bodies present in my works. My videos implicate the body without having an actor, because I am trying to recreate a simulation of sensuality, the sense of being right there. I want the viewer to enter my feelings, or maybe even think that the work is about their own life. The imagery becomes like a dream or a memory for the viewer. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Joy. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Right now I am working on a solo show that opens in May 2019. It will be both a painting show and a video show. I am trying to figure out my experience of the relationship between the two. I am building some hybrid paintings that will also contain monitors. I am very excited about this work. I am also working on a new video that is going be slightly longer and with slightly more of a narrative. This new piece I am hoping to premiere at some festivals next year. Anyone interested can keep up with me at joy-meyer.com or jjmeyer.org. Thank you for your time and interest! An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] Women Cinemakers
Fictional Desires; Eight of Cups, film still, 2018 part of the multi-channelvideo installation, Fictional Desires, 1:44 looped/silent
Hello Anaïs and welcome to : we would like to invite our readers to visit in order to get a synoptic idea about your multifaceted artistic production, and we would start this An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] interview with a couple of questions regarding your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research? My first experiences certainly come from my childhood, the multiple visits to museums, Anaïs Pélaquier Women Cinemakers meets Lives and works in Tresques (South of France) I develop a work around my own childhood, family history and snatches from those of others. A certain attachment to the remains, places, objects or sentences found abandoned; to relics and religious iconography. The question of what we inherit, what we are made of. Revealing what disappeared, or what has been dispersed. Coming up against its material, its presence. Inventing "stories" in these empty spaces, opening dialogues, creating mappings. Interrogating what I'm stumbling upon, what arrests my gaze. I intermingle and mix multiple media. Videos, embroideries on old photos, installations, drawings, spontaneously combustible boxes...
Women Cinemakers churches, and contemporary art exhibitions with my parents during our holidays in Europe. I come from a family that is very attached to art, my mother is an artist, my father writes, my sister is a classical singer. I practiced opera since my childhood. I trained as an actress and I work in theater and opera. All these aspects have obviously been foundational for my work. Like my philosophy studies at university. I started off as an actress and a stage director, and gradually left the stage, eventually choosing to continue my personal research in a more solitary way, through video, drawing, working on old photos and other experiences. But things are all interwoven. My first video, How I lost my voice, came from my inability to read a book, The voice in the closet of Raymond Federman, a book written as a single flow, without punctuation, to convey his confinement in a closet, as a child, to escape a Nazi raid. And strangely I grabbed a camera and read the text, under that eye filming me, in tight close-up, until I lost my voice. I do not remember where this desire came from but it made sense, and it made reading this text possible. I think this interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers experience has been seminal. This is where I started my face to face with the camera. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting experimental video that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/140435200. What has at once impressed us of your insightful inquiry into the resonance between human body and domestic gestures is the way you have provided the results of your artistic research with such captivating aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? The idea came suddenly, during an event where I was confronted to the question of the right to speak, react, be heard, and was led to remember all those moments where one has the sensation of having to repress one's vehemence. The French word for this kind of repression is “ravaler” which literally means “to swallow back”, interview
Women Cinemakers so this image appeared to me: me swallowing my vehemence, swallowing the word itself, its letters cut from uncooked liver. The liver then became cookies. It may be because the innocence of the cookies recalls a domestic gesture: cooking, and childhood, as opposed to the more trashy side of the meat. There is often this question, this search in my work, of how to speak of a certain violence without being directly in it. With all the difficulty and the pitfalls that this point of view can bring... The relation to this violence clearly appears only in the quote that closes the video, a quote found in a dictionary at the word "vehemence". It also has to do with the strength of language, the materiality of words, which act almost as a real thing, as a fact. The importance I have always given to words. To return to the question of domestic gesture: making cookies, spreading the tablecloth, dusting crumbs, eating ... A series of gestures and simple elements. This minimalism is somewhat a base of my video work. Few elements. Often unmoving long shots or very little editing. Duration is therefore real time. It can be perceived as long, but it is what it is. Sometimes I even slow it down so that some things become noticeable. This is the case in the video