Cat Tyc,
Speed Freaks Do Bach
March 14, 2013
How did you find out about Joanie 4 Jackie and how old were you at the time?
I think I found about Joanie 4 Jackie just from reading about Miranda July in BUST magazine. I was in my early 20’s.
In the back of my mind, I think Joanie 4 Jackie was always bookmarked for whenever the time came around for that video that was yet to be made so I was always staying abreast of it in interviews with Miranda to make sure it was still there when I was ready.
What interested you about the project?
I liked that it was taking on the same perspective that Riot Grrl originally took with women in music, which was that if it felt like there was a community of girls just figuring it out and wanting to see other videos by girls (like me!) then that would be enough incentive to make the steps to just try something and see what would come of it.
At the time you participated in Joanie 4 Jackie did you consider yourself a filmmaker? What was your relationship to making movies?
At that time, I felt like I was learning how to be a video artist. I have always been obsessed with film and studied theater and writing in school. At the time, I was making zines of my poetry but I was feeling too emotionally exposed by writing and reading my words out publicly. Video felt like a way to express the things I wanted to express with some emotional barrier. I had a text I wanted to try articulating through filming dancers in the state of rehearsal.
It felt like a metaphor for “practicing” which was what I was doing by learning how to shoot with a video camera I was borrowing from my day job and learning how to edit in iMovie.
I also had a personal connection to this material because I was a dancer as a child before turning to acting so I felt like I could relate to the physicality of learning and getting that into your body.
Do you have any specific anecdotes or memories associated with the project?
My only anecdote was that the chainletter DVD was the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Portland, Oregon from New York for a few years. I had decided to go to this mystical land where women and girls made art all day to see what what I could do there. It felt appropriate that my first practice would come to me embraced by this mysterious cloud of girls who got it, right at the moment I was at this place trying to figure out what the next step would be.
What did you think/feel about the Joanie 4 Jackie at the time? And now, in retrospect?
I think Joanie 4 Jackie was/is awesome!
What institutions, groups, people, publications and movements were inspiring you at the time of your participation in J4J?
Riot Grrl, Le Tigre, Eileen Myles’ “Cool For You.”
What do you do now – professionally and otherwise? Are you still involved in filmmaking?
I now live in Brooklyn, NY and am currently making an interactive documentary about the sustainable fashion movement to educate and empower the everyday consumer about textile responsibility. I have directed music videos that have screened on MTVu and LOGO’s NewNowNext. In 2009, I adapted, directed, produced and edited a short narrative “Umbrella” that has gone on to screen in galleries & festivals in Seattle, Portland and New York City, Berlin and London. In 2012, I presented a solo screening of early video work at the Microscope Gallery in Bushwick. I am a member of New York Women in Film and Television as well as the Brooklyn Filmmaker’s Collective.