Marietta Kesting, Photo Roman
How did you find out about Joanie 4 Jackie and how old were you at the time?
When I moved to New York after college, a friend told me about it. I was 22.
What interested you about the project?
I was interested in seeing other women’s work and it reminded me of making mixed-music tapes for friends in my teenage years. Also there were not many venues to get work shown or see others’ work after college.
At the time you participated in Joanie 4 Jackie did you consider yourself a filmmaker? What was your relationship to making movies?
I was primarily a photographer, but I wanted to become a filmmaker.
Do you have any specific anecdotes or memories associated with your movie?
The film is shot with a still photo camera on black and white analogue film in Berlin, due to the fact that we didn’t have a video camera. But then it worked out quite well with the stills and became its own aesthetic device. (and of course I had always been an admirer of Marker’s La Jetée). My boyfriend at the time and another good friend acted in it.
What did you think/feel about the Joanie 4 Jackie at the time? And now, in retrospect?
I thought it was a kind of obscure but interesting project, but because my visa was denied and I had to leave the USA, I never actually received the chainletter tapes, I don’t think.
What institutions, groups, people, publications and movements were inspiring you at the time of your participation in J4J?
I was working at Magnum Photos as an editorial assistant and that was a visual education in itself. In Williamsburg, there was the Ocularis open zone screening that my college friend Sarah Reynolds was associated with and where people could screen their own works. It was an exciting place.
What do you do now – professionally and otherwise? Are you still involved in filmmaking?
I am a junior professor for media theory at the cx center for interdisciplinary studies at the academy of fine arts Munich and I work in a research project on “The Matter of Historicity: Material Practices in Audiovisual Art” at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. So I am still very much involved with film, media, and art, even if now more from the theoretical side, But I have completed several film projects (with Aljoscha Weskott: Sunny Land, premiere at Berlinale 2010) after my first film and would like to do so as well in the future.