Margaux Williamson,
viewer
May 1, 2013
Where and when was the screening you attended?
I heard about JOANIE 4 JACKIE when I went to see Miranda July talk about her work at a small screening room in Toronto called Cinecycle. I bought a VHS tape at the merch table after the event.
What do you remember about it?
At this event – the lights went out.
What did you think/feel about the Joanie 4 Jackie at the time? And now, in retrospect?
I loved the idea. It was simple and felt exciting. I always imagined there must be a lot of women making videos and was hungry to see what people were doing. Video is such an accessible medium that can be somewhat artificially subjected (by institutions and by artists themselves) to such controlled venues for distribution. Especially when I first heard of JOANIE 4 JACKIE, you mostly just saw things at specific screenings in your specific city. It could feel sparse and random. Nothing was on the internet yet. Even though I just watched one tape and didn’t send anything in, I became aware and felt in some way connected to part of something promising and bigger, that wanted to move and be seen and wanted a new kind of audience.
What did you do then – professionally and otherwise? Were you a filmmaker? And now?
I was an artist – selling works as a painter. I’ve since made a movie.
What institutions, groups, people, publications and movements were inspiring you at this time in your life?
At that time, people I met were probably more interesting to me than institutions, groups and publications. I was interested in seeing a new kind of art that had a freedom – not too caught up in the boundaries, rules and histories of the established, academic art venues. I wanted to see what people made when they imagined an audience of curious, enthusiastic people rather than imagining an audience from an institution.
Anything you would like to see on the J4J site?
I would still like to see what people are doing. It’s great that it’s so much easier now to share. There was something exciting about the “promise” of movies you weren’t necessarily seeing but becoming aware of on Joanie for Jackie – without seeing everything, they could suit what your mind needed to imagine. But the quickness in the way things can happen now if a project like JOANIE 4 JACKIE was on-line – for instance, finding the people that you are most specifically interested in, or seeing how people are approaching what you’re also interested in – seems like it could speed up other great promising things.