JO NIGOGHOSSIAN INTERVIEWS MEREDITH JAMES

JN: Your video moves from images of an obvious set, to distinguished interiors, cold narratives, and the absurd. What relationship are you drawing between these elements and why is the connection there? What is your main interest? is it a re-evaluation of transitions? or is it about a new language that uses old transitions for it's mode to talk about something else?

MJ: I set out to make a video in which every transition was seamless. The camera would never ‘cut’ from one image to another, instead each scene would unfold from the previous scene. I let this formal decision dictate the content of the video… I wanted the architecture I filmed to perform for the camera like actors that say their lines and then leave the stage. The characters in the video- myself and my sister- pace back and forth on screen as scenery unravels around us… in a way the two characters function as the stage for the architecture and interiors to move over. In my crit, Jessica said she thought that the women were wearing the architecture. That made a lot of sense to me, basically I wanted to create a kind dialog between all the elements in the video. I wanted the camera to have the power to corrupt the architecture it recorded.

JN: The corruption of the specific architecture you chose to expose is interesting because at some points what looks like an upper class façade is broken down by the crummy quality of video. What were you trying to achieve by this?

MJ: Rooms with formal, stage-like interior decoration and polite arrangements, like a table set for dinner, seem to demand a specific kind of mannered behavior. I thought of the women as moving entirely within the physical and social parameters set up in each scene… I wanted the video to move at a pace where your expectations for every gesture are fulfilled but, even within that system of controlled behavior, strange or uncanny moments twist the narrative into something unrecognizable. Given the table set for dinner, you can anticipate that the girl sitting there would begin to carve the chicken in front of her, but you could never expect there to be an aluminum chicken cooked inside.
Video does not have the lushness or clarity of film but I wanted to flatten these wealthy interiors into flimsy layers and toy-like artifices. Film carries a kind of seduction and nostalgia that would elevate the subject matter into something more sensual.

JN: Why do u use such obvious TV effects, is it about the surface of an effect or is it about content?

MJ: I’m interested in drawing out the texture on the surface of the ‘window’ through which we viscerally experience the moving image. I filmed TV monitors and projections to point to the appliances we engage and I used obvious digital tricks and old fashioned in-camera effects to confuse and break down the viewer’s perception of the world onscreen. In the video, a digital image on screen continually flattens into an object within the scene: a page of paper, a tv monitor, or a tunnel. A couple times, I printed a video still of the last frame of one scene and used it as the set for the next scene.

JN: I’m really fascinated by you using old-fashioned in camera effects when using a digital video camera right now. I know that you reshoot often, make large sets for a small clip and personally act in your videos. You treat video so much like film, yet keep the video raw. It makes me think of Ed Wood because you do this one man show production. How crucial is it for you to do everything yourself?

MJ: Totally crucial. I made the video as I went along- that is, I only planned one scene at a time. I liked being able to shoot, edit, reshoot, and use that footage in the background of the next shot all in the same day. I wanted to be involved with every aspect of the making so every aspect could inform the next decision I made. I think it seemed crazy to build a life-size building facade in my studio for a 30 second scene, but building the facade totally changed the way it functioned in the scene… there are so many ways a camera captures scale and perspective that I couldn’t have imagined until I looked through the lens. The gap between our perception of space and the camera’s perception of space calls into question our interpretation of what we see everyday.

JN: The video moves at a very slow pace. Even though you use in camera as well as digital effects, you show them in a drawn-out process, not giving in to effects for entertainment value. The pace of the video was the most surprising to me because scenes were drawn out in a real time, but the usual tropes of seduction (like slow motion) were missing, yet there was enough information to keep the viewer watching. Can you talk about what you think is enough information over time, to keep a viewer occupied? – that’s a tricky one….I need to rephrase, but do u know what I mean?

MJ: I wanted the viewer to be able to keep up. That is, I wanted the viewer to be able to comprehend the shifts in the video… After watching the video a couple times you could say precisely how I created all the special effects but I don’t think that detracts from their effectiveness. Video has such a convincing quality of ‘realness’ or directness that a special effect can have visual impact even when all the mechanisms for creating it are exposed. I don’t think the transitions would have meaning if they didn’t have a kind of transparency.
I think the pace of the video lulls the viewer into a trance-like state of acceptance of the images that appear on screen. So when the screen seems to tear open or the narrative falls apart the viewer is genuinely surprised out of revery.

JN: The moving vinyl with photographic image print seemed like an effort to make video an object without being an installation, do you see it as an installation or something else? and if something else, what might that be?

MJ: I see the moving hallway piece as a three-dimensional video. The piece is a physical equivalent to the filmic trope of a slow zoom down a hallway. In my mind, the slow zoom references, but does not replicate, an actual experience of moving through space. When the viewer walks into the piece they have a feeling of suspended motion that carries them to the other side of the ‘hallway’. I think this feeling is similar to the kind of passive spectatorship we bring to the experience of watching a movie unfold. I like the idea that objects or phenomena once translated into video could never return to their original form. The object (in this case a hallway) would have to be forever accounting for the movement of the camera that once filmed it.

JN: While the moving hallway became a video, the actual video seemed to became more of an object. Once the viewer had walked through the hallway and was into the space where the video could be seen full screen, the viewer felt kind of trapped and it became quite experiential. Was that your intention?

MJ: I wanted to find a way to make the viewer enter the piece. The hallway draws you toward the video and then acts as a bottle-neck so it was difficult to get out of the room with the video once you were in there. The video was projected onto an 8-foot wide screen that stood in the middle of the room like an obstruction (rather than a natural part of the gallery architecture) so you experience a kind of compression walking into the installation. I wanted the video to walk a line between charm and coercion, and the literal experience of being pulled toward the video set up this intention pretty clearly. The rhythmic, metallic sound of the dry cleaning conveyors provided the sound for the video. I liked creating an inclusive relationship between the two pieces because it became another way for me to assert that the range of the video extends beyond the digital medium into the space that the viewer occupied.