11/10/16

Transcript of conversation with Interdisciplinary artist/filmmaker Janie Geiser

in her office at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA.

I was an MFA candidate at the time.

JG: So the first question, “You’re at a party and how do you describe yourself?”

LF: I was just thinking-

JG: It’s a good one.

LF: ...when you’re in an academic setting...I’m imagining there’s a difference in the way you would describe what you do.

JG: I don’t think there’s a difference in an academic setting and in the world for me. Because I think, even though teaching is something I’m very devoted to, I don’t usually describe myself as a teacher. I just say I’m an artist. Then the trouble comes when they say what kind of artist, what kind of art do you do. And so then I say, I make films and performances. And then if they say what kind of films, what kind of performances, then it’s a longer story. And even though I mostly use frame based filmmaking, animation as my technique, I don’t define myself as an animator. Because my work is really more in an experimental film context, or it’s in an installation context and somehow for me I find the term animator or animation very limiting. I think it’s a technique and not a form, for me. Now, there is sort of a form called “experimental animation” and there are people who are teaching in your program who define themselves that way and I think often their work fits into that form better. So, it’s not a negative for me, but it’s not how I define my work.

LF: That’s interesting.

JG: So, mostly I just try to stick with artist and then hopefully they won’t ask too many more questions. And I usually say, oh and I teach at CalArts because I think it’s a great school and I’m happy to be here.

LF: Since you mention teaching at CalArts, do you feel like it has impacted your art practice?

JG: Oh, absolutely. I mean, can you imagine? You’re around 30 to 50 emerging artists or even already artists who are getting more critique in their practice every week. I’m just so inspired by the work the students do. I feel like I’m the student a lot of the time. And then teaching you have to always come up with interesting things to teach and I often create elective classes that are along the lines of what I’m thinking about right now or what I want to explore further. So then it’s kind of a laboratory where, in a way, I’m learning as much as the students.

LF: About your background, was there anything that you would highlight as important to getting you to where you are as an artist and educator?

JG: There’s always a lot of those junctures. I studied visual art in college, but I didn’t start out that way. I started out as a French major. So, I guess the first thing was, I had a secret desire and I took an art class. And then I just completely jumped stream and left the French major and started being an art major. I didn’t really have a background in art, so I was playing catch up the whole time. It was a few semesters before I started getting A’s in the classes, which sort of made me work harder. So I think that taught me really good work habits, and then just learning from all the people that I was in there with. So, I left college. I didn’t go to grad school, sort of more like, life was the grad school. I went to Atlanta. I was in Georgia, and just started drawing and painting and mostly doing 2D work and trying to exhibit them in little galleries. There was a big arts festival there and I sold four pieces. I didn’t photograph them ahead of time and there was one that I really wanted a photograph of, so I contacted the person who bought it. And she said, oh my boyfriend has it, he’s framing it, he’ll photograph it for you, he’s a photographer. Anyway, he came by and then he told me about this place he was working at that was like, a nonprofit arts center that had dance and music and visual art and artist’s studios. He said they were looking for another person to work there, do you want to come meet the people? So then I just fell into this whole group of artists that were all doing all kinds of different stuff. And that was sort of, my first huge influence outside of school. Then I started designing for the dance company and making artist’s books because there was a press there. I ran a gallery. I learned all those things that you kind of have to know as an artist to have charge of your own presentation. It was a really vital time for me, very interdisciplinary and very fun. Everybody was 25 to 35 years old, so it was kind of like art school, but it was at this era where nonprofits were all getting off the ground. That organization then kind of became the Contemporary Arts Center of Atlanta, but it went through a lot of iterations before getting that institutional. I was making dioramas and motorized boxes with puppet figures in them and there was this puppet center in Atlanta, and the guy who was running that, he saw my work. I was seeing adult puppet theatre at that place, like Bread and Puppet and all these amazing people, and he said to me at some point, you should try to make a puppet show. And I was like, okay, because I wasn’t thinking of how hard that was going to be. Then I made a small hand and rod puppet show, which means I had to work with musicians, but I knew musicians from the nonprofit. And I had to work with performers but I knew some of them too, and puppeteers. They taught me to puppeteer at the same time I was doing my first show. That was kind of like when I found the art class in college, just like, this is amazing because you can mix all these things together. At the same time I was really interested in animation and actually sat in on a class at Georgia State university on animation, but I could see how much both of those art forms were going to take for me to learn them, so I was just like okay, I’ll do that later. Then I just focused on live performance.

LF: I’m interested in the fact that you used the phrase mixing together. I know it seems like a lot of what you do is multidisciplinary, and a lot of what I’ve read [about your work] highlights the in-between quality. I was just wondering how that relates to your relationship to multidisciplinarity.

JG: That’s actually a good question, I don’t know if I have a clear answer for it, but I am really interested in the in between, formally or in terms of content or in terms of perceptions. Sort of like, that liminal space, which is why puppetry is so interesting because its kind of between something that seems alive and the isn’t alive, but we all attribute life that we know is fake. So, its those kind of dualities that aren’t necessarily in conflict but that can exist at the same time or in this liminal space in between. And since I’ve started expanding what kind of forms I was working in, I sort of look to those forms, and when I have and idea of what form might be the best form for that, and usually its a combination of forms, so like in a theatre piece that I’m doing where I also have film in it, the film might provide a less narrative way to tell a part of the story. Or, it might provide a close up of something that the audience can’t quite see the details of, or just another perspective. So, I think it can highlight that in-between-ness, but also provide different ways of looking at the same thing. And I think its just sort of how I feel in life, that we’re in between everything. How I even define myself, there’s not one thing.

LF: Bringing up the idea of the puppets and their kind of, quality of otherness- maybe this is kind of a question without an answer-

JG: Which is the answer to most questions.

LF: Even in your animations, it seems like working with objects and kind of the secret life in them, I’m wondering if you would consider your role in relation to the objects as kind of like, extracting life from them or are you imbuing them with life? Is it a combination?

JG: Yeah, I saw that question. I think it’s not quite either of those words. I think its sort of anthropological almost, like digging into them and seeing what I find. And also associational, what they can suggest to me, but also maybe to people that are watching which might be different. There is something about the secret life of objects that I find really fascinating. It’s sort of like reanimation. (JG picks up an object off her bookshelf) This might become something else but its so evocative if you put it in context with other things. Its really a collage approach. When you think about making a flat collage you might pull from here or from here or from here, and you’re taking things that had a specific purpose or meaning and you’re drawing on that by using them, but you’re also kind of giving them a chance to be in a different sentence. Like they’re all phrases or words and you’re putting them in a different sentence. It’s more like responding to them than imbuing them, because they come with so much stuff already, but definitely shifting what those meanings were.

LF: Maybe I’m just interested in that word (imbue).

JG: It is a good word. How would you define it?

LF: I feel like there’s a ceremonial quality to it.

JG: I think I know what you mean. So maybe, its partly by isolating them and drawing attention to them that there is a kind of imbuing that we all do with them, but its not my intention to create a ceremonial context for them. But I think there is something you’re on to that’s interesting.

LF: I read that you had said you’re early animations were “infused by New York and its iconography and ethos” but that since you’ve been living in LA that this city has seeped into your work. So I’m just wondering what kind of role the space that you’re in and the history of the space you’re in plays with formulating what you’re working on.

JG: Just in terms of things that find there way into the films, I’ve been working with a lot of flowers and plants because if I’m working on something and I need something green and alive I can just go out in the back yard and find it and I can’t do that in New York. I think I might have worked with flowers on one film but I had to go buy them. I think, the sun and the materials that I find here, like, my most recent film I was looking at two photographs that were from a masonic gathering in long beach, so there’s just something about the place you are that delivers certain materials to you. I would say mostly its the natural world. And it shows up more in terms of content in my performances. The last couple of pieces that are finished pieces, one was about a story that was a true story about a girl in east LA who got kidnapped and murdered. And she was found in San Bernardino mountains, so just looking at the landscape of this place and really essentializing it to just a hillside with not much green on it, because one thing in LA is that nature is always around you, being in such a strangely unnatural place like the freeways and Hollywood, but having nature. You look out and theres all these mountains and what green there is is year round. There’s always something blooming and always something alive even in this desert, so I find that really interesting. Coyotes might come down my street, and I don’t even live that outside of town. I live near Griffith Park, so they just come down from the park. There’s something about the urban and the wild really coming together here in a way that I find really fascinating. I did another piece that was weirdly about the history of, through one little story, LA as a haven for health. People came here because of the climate and yet it was near a city. And all these TB clinics sprouted up on hills around LA and people would just live in these cottages or tents just as a way of healing themselves within a medical context. So I find that interesting too because LA became such an unhealthy place for a while. It’s kind of come back, they really have cleaned it up quite a bit, but I remember visiting LA in the late 80s and the smog was just terrible. So, I think it does definitely seep in without even deliberately trying to do it. And I’m always fascinated with history and the history that’s happening where you are is more apparent in a way that I really like.

LF: You mentioned your interest in history and I know you talk about the influence of Bunraku puppetry. Could you elaborate on your interest in that?

JG: It’s a Japanese puppet form. It’s a form that requires three people to operate one puppet. So the head puppeteer operates the head and the right hand, and then the second puppeteer operates the back and the left hand.

LF: Is it always that way?

JG: Pretty much, I mean the way that we do it, we might shift that a little bit. But mainly one person is doing the head and the right hand, because then they’re not carrying any weight, so then they can really be expressive. And the second person is mainly carrying the weight of the puppet and the left arm. Then the other person does the feet. So the three of them have to really be able to work together almost as one brain, but they’re able to give the puppets such articulate movements. So, from the first

that I saw Bunraku I thought I want to do that. It’s taken me a while to figure out how to do it well and I don’t really perform that much anymore so it’s really other people operating the puppets, but I just love what you can get. And I love seeing the three people around the puppet and sort of watching them as you’re watching the puppet, and what that whole relationship becomes. And then the other elements of Bunraku are usually there’s the puppeteers and then there’s a narrator and one or two musicians, so I also really love that. The way they’re separating the character into all these different parts. Not unlike animation where obviously the drawn figure is not speaking for itself, you might have another person doing that for you, it might not even be you if you’re using voice. So it’s splitting the character into all these different parts but doing it live. And then seeing that, the person watching it is putting it together. Because you don’t think about it. Once you’re watching it you don’t think how can those three people be doing that and the voice be coming from her, if its working it just all comes together.

LF: Thank you again for your time today.

JG: Thank you.