The Hunch That Caused The Winning Streak And Fought The Doldrums Mightily
Stephanie Barber - 2010, 2:00, miniDV, Baltimore
The interior was delusional like any visual psyche. the couches and plants, rugs and paintings were all in cahoots and up in arms over the cahootery. the explorers were under-qualified and cowardly. Originally created in a slightly different format for Milwaukee International with The Suburban's exquisite corpse video for the No Soul For Sale show at the Tate Modern and will premiere in this iteration and the 2010 NYFF's Views from the Avant-Garde.
Stephanie Barber is a multi media artist who creates meticulously crafted, odd and imaginative writing, films and videos as well as performance pieces which incorporate music, literature and video. She has had solo screenings of her film and video work at MoMA, NY; Anthology Film Archives, NY; San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center; Chicago Filmmakers; Bio Penrepo Prague; Close-Up Video, London and The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art among others. Her films and videos have also been included in group screenings at The New York Film Festival; Film Festival Rotterdam; The Cinematheque Francaise; The London International Film Festival; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Proekt Fabrika and the State Contemporary Art Centre (both in Moscow); The Tate Modern in London; The San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art and The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art among others.
Her performances have been featured at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Milwaukee Museum of Art, The Haggerty Museum of Art and galleries and artspaces around the world. Her most recent video/performance piece, in the jungle, premiered in May 2009 at The Stone, NYC, Los Solos in Baltimore, in Chicago for the closing night of the Chicago Underground Film Festival at the San Francisco Cinematheque in early 2010.
Her book poems was published in 2006 by Bronze Skull Press and her recent book these here separated to see how they standing alone or the soundtrack to six films by stephanie barber was published in May 2008 by Publishing Genius Press. Included in this book is her experimental essay the inversion, transcription, evening track and attractor (the soundtrack for the video of the same name) which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Bret McCabe at The Baltimore City Paper wrote Stephanie Barber’s films “....can feel like highly formal exercises in film language made by a profoundly restless mind, playing image and sound off each other and forcing you to locate implied meanings on your own. Others are both silly and oddly engaging, involving puppets mundanely discussing pressing metaphysical concerns. And others calmly and almost imperceptibly sweep you up in the genuine breadth of their emotional wake.” She currently lives in Baltimore, MD USA.
STEPHANIEBARBER.COM
Questions & Answers
ATA: The video creates a strong mood -- a sensation of excitement from apparently spare means. It's delightfully playful and a bit deadly serious and disorienting, a bit scary. I was curious how this work takes shape: from a mental image, from language, or from some other source.
SB: thanks, these are the adjectives i would most hope for a viewer to use when describing this video. there is so much rain here in baltimore. it is like gray and sonic sheets have been hung outside my window.
this is the hardest of questions--where an idea comes from. this piece was originally part of a large exquisite corpse that milwaukee international with the suburban gallery was piecing together for the tate modern's no souls for sale show. it was a last minute rush job. the piece was originally 1 minute and after the initial flurry of getting it done i went back in and slowed it down a bit.
i had been reading a lot about the croatian/serbian/bosnian struggles. (a conflict so complicated it makes the spanish civil war seem like a game of checkers) these interiors--the photos hung on the walls, the furniture and rugs and televisions are various domestic items from croatian/serbian/bosnian homes collaged together to suggest one continuous home. i think i was looking at a book and thinking about how invisible any cultural markers, any differences in these artifacts is to me. i can not say "this photo is from a serb's living room and this is clearly the rug of a bosnian". i don't really know who can. the serbs? croatians? regardless i decided to take it a bit further and add (clearly) british parading and a japanese musician and the little bit of music at the end is Asnaqetch Werqu, an ethiopian musician. though i don't think it is necessary to know any of this to enjoy the piece and to get a sense of this cultural collision regardless of the details. and i'm sorry to not have addressed more specifically this question of ideational origin.
ATA: The "interiors" of this video seem to be found photographs from your own collection. Can you tell us a little bit about your process of gathering pictures and then putting them to use (if and where you seek them out, how you make selections for your own work, etc.)?
SB: these images are all from photo books. i get them in the usual spots; bookstores and thriftshops and many are gifted to me.
ATA: Does writing poetry intersect with your film & video making activities, and if so, how?
SB: i feel like (the above) answer will be more elegant and clear if it canbe thought of in terms of this answer. my writing and my use of found photographs are generatively similar. the same impulse which causes me to place one word beside another is at work when i am considering how to organize images. the same choices are made with words or found photographs or paint hue or composition when looking through a lens. in the end i feel like all artists do is choose and organize. some organize in a way that is tender or humorous or intellectually challenging. some organize through chance. conflict or reason, patterns or stasis. words or sounds or images or tastes or rain.
i am interested in creating pieces of art which (regardless of medium) resonate emotionally and intellectually with surprising equanimity.
Q&A by Liz Wing
