VIDEO:11 Artists Interview-Working with Moving Images

“For years I didn’t know how to say ‘cut’, because I felt it was not allowed to cut the flow of time.” Hop on board as 11 amazing artists – including Wim Wenders, Pipilotti Rist, Laurie Anderson, Bill Viola, and Jonas Mekas – share their thoughts on working with different forms of moving images.

“The films come out of a need to make an image, an impulse to make a film, and the meaning emerges of the months of the making of the film,” says South African artist William Kentridge. American director Joshua Oppenheimer considers filmmaking a way of exploring how we perceive the world as well as ourselves, and American video- and performance artist Joan Jonas has always “performed in relation to the frame of the camera – what the camera saw.” American-Lithuanian filmmaker Jonas Mekas  is attracted to images that catch the very moment that makes a situation unique, just as German filmmaker Wim Wenders likes the documentary approach to filmmaking, where things only happen once “and it’s almost miraculous that you can catch it.”

When American artist and filmmaker Doug Aitken felt frustrated by the separation between art forms, he launched a project “in complete ignorance of the separation between these mediums.” In much the same way, Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist feels that she is “freeing electronics from certain forms,” just as American artist Ryan Trecartin uses the physical space to play with the “sculptural frame or container that poetically resonates with the movie.” In the same spirit of experimentation, American multimedia artist Laurie Anderson talks about her fascination with the medium of VR, which provides you with new choices and possible outcomes. American filmmaker Bill Morrison works with archival footage in different stages of degradation to make new films, and American video artist Bill Viola shares his first magical encounter with a camera.

All interviews by Kasper Bech Dyg, Marc-Christoph Wagner, Christian Lund, and Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen.

Cover photo: Bill Viola, Ascension, 2000, Color video projection, stereo sound, Performer: Josh Coxx, Photo: Kira Perov, Courtesy of Bill Viola Studio