Artists Bios for LOOKING IS BETTER THAN FEELING YOU
curated by Astria Suparak
for Ladyfest

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ARTISTS BIOS

JACKIE GOSS began making films and videotapes as a student at Brown University and earned her M.F.A. in Electronic Arts from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in 1997. She lives in the Hudson Valley in New York and teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.

DARA GREENWALD is an interdisciplinary artist living in Chicago. She is concerned with embodiment, community, and social activism. You might find her dancing in the streets addressing these concerns with the Pink Bloque.

KELLY HAYES is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. A non-traditional academic, she spends her spare time making no-budget film and video and doing photography. In addition to her dissertation, her current projects include a video documentary on Macumba, an Afro-Brazilian possession religion that is also the topic of her dissertation, and a traveling photographic show entitled "At the Margins of the Sacred: Candomblé in Rio de Janeiro", which opened in April in Brasília. She currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

COLLEEN HENNESSEY currently lives and makes work in Los Angeles, CA.

Home Video Project: artists contributing 30 seconds on the concept of home. For more program Info contact jeanniex@earthlink.net

KATHY HIGH is a media artist, curator, and teacher living and working in New York state. Her single-channel videotapes include both documentary and experimental forms, and touch on topics including body politics, science fiction, and the paranormal. Typically her work incorporates archival footage, interviews and fictional footage, and a sense of irony. She is currently in production on a feature-length musical about human genome mapping, called "The 23 Songs of the Chromosomes", about two women scientists working in different areas of biotech/human gene research who fall steamily in love.

Since the early 80s, High has been producing and exhibiting media artwork. High has been active in the media arts community for twenty years, and has worked with a variety of organizations. She started the video exhibition program at Hallwalls Gallery, Buffalo, NY. She was a founding member of the Standby Program in NYC in the mid-80s. In 1991, she founded the critical journal "FELIX: A Journal of Media Arts and Communication", which encourages dialogue among alternative media makers (http://www.standby.org/felix/). Currently she is producing an international issue of "FELIX" with Mexican and U.S. artists entitled "RISK/RIESGO".

MIRANDA JULY is a multi-media performer and video artist based in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. Her videos (The Amateurist, Nest of Tens, Getting Stronger Every Day) have screened internationally at sites such as MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Nest of Tens will be included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, in addition to a sound installation commissioned for the show. Currently July is touring internationally with The Swan Tool, a multi-media performance commissioned by the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, the I.F.F.R., and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. July's previous multi-media performance, Love Diamond, was commissioned by P.I.C.A., and has been performed at sites around the country, closing at The Kitchen in New York. July has recorded several performance albums, available on the Kill Rock Stars and K record labels.

During breaks from her own work, July has directed a video for the all-girl rock band Sleater Kinney, made her feature film acting debut in Alison Maclean's Jesus' Son, and provided consultation for Wayne Wang's feature film, The Center of the World. In 1995 she founded Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola), a movie distribution network for independent women movie makers. This project has allowed women of all ages and backgrounds to exchange their movies and give each other support.

For the past three years July has collaborated with DJ and sound artist Zac Love; Love has composed live and recorded soundtracks for both the movies and live performances. Today Miranda is hard at work on a feature-length movie, some short stories, a new performance and a few other similar things.

KJ MOHR "A seamless blending of Pollyanna and Patti Hearst, of Tom Jones and Joan Rivers, KJ Mohr is a Chicago based performer, curator and movie-maker. Her performance work deals with Midwestern lore and cross-cultural examinations through characters and public confrontations. As a curator, KJ works with Women In the Director's Chair, Heartland Homos! and Discount Cinema. She has been making super-8 and video movies for the past ten years and has worked as a producer, cinematographer, production designer and art director on numerous shorts and feature length film productions."-KM

SHANNON PLUMB - I was born in Schenectady, New York in 1970. I studied at Junior College of Albany, NY, did a theatre apprenticeship at Williamstown, and majored in acting and theatre at the State University of New Paltz, NY. In 1995 I moved to New York City and a year later began modeling for the fashion photographer, Mario Sorrenti while attempting to pursue a career in theatre.

I spent time writing and developing short theatre sketches without the ability to bring them to life. Then, a short time later a friend bought me a used super8 camera from a fleamarket. I began making movies - short, black and white, three minute, silent works. I've produced four series of films and have since shown them at several local venues throughout Manhattan, including; The Annina Nosei Gallery, The Anthology of Film Archives, and festivals such as; The Williamsburg Film Festival, and The UnderGround Film Festival.

My Work has been shown in limited venues across Europe and has been critically addressed in print for ID Magazine, Paper Magazine, V Magazine, French Vogue, New Art Examiner, and other local showcases. I have been involved in live theatre productions: The Performing Gargage - Emerging Artist Series as a guest performer with Bill (Crutch) Shannon, and Gale Gates, Et.Al., Production of "So Long Ago I Can't Remember…" I currently live in Manhattan, continue to work with the Super8 format, but hope to extend the scope of my films into larger formats. I also hope to continue my engagements in live theatre performances.

JENNY STARK - Born in Bellaire, Texas received her undergraduate degree in Photography from the University of Houston, and went on to receive her Masters degree in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts. She has taught at University of Houston and is presently an assistant Professor of multi-media and digital video at Cal State University in Sacramento. Her works have shown at South by Southwest, Austin, the New York Underground Film Festival, LA Film Forum, and the Viennale Film Festival, Vienna.

KIRSTEN STOLTMANN (Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1968) lives and works in Chicago and Los Angeles. She has had solo shows of her work at the Donald Young Gallery and the Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee. Her work has screened all over the world and was recently included in a Rock/Pop Music show at The Sydney Museum of Art in Austrailia. Kirsten loves art!

JENNIFER SULLIVAN (born in Albany, NY, 1978) makes sculpture, drawings, videos and clothing that aim to redefine beauty through make-shift means of production. She is currently working on an interactive t-shirt exchange project, a painting series of paperback book covers, and an inexact replica of a WWF merchandise catalog. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

ANN WEATHERSBY was born in 1970 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and lives and works in New York City. She received a BA from The University of Texas at Austin and is currently a 2003 MFA candidate at Yale University.
Her work has been published by Issue, The New York Times Magazine, Nylon and Tank and exhibited internationally at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris.

KAREN YASINSKY was born in 1965 in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1988 she received her B.A. from Duke University in Durham, N.C. and in 1992 she completed the M.F.A. program at the Yale University School of Art. This year she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Philip Morris Emerging Artist Fellowship through the American Academy in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Casey Kaplan 10-6, New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, L.I.C. and in the New York Underground Film Festival. Internationally she has worked with Philomene Magers Projekte, Munich, Air de Paris, Paris and Rebecca M. Camhi Gallery, Athens
More info on Karen's process at: http://www.ps1.org/cut/animations/install/yasinsky.html

Curator: ASTRIA SUPARAK
(born in Los Angeles, CA, 1978) curates site-specific shows for art museums, experimental film festivals, music venues and bands. After the shows play to their particular audiences Suparak then brings the work to different settings and a wider public, with locations including schools, sports bars, artist collectives, living rooms, churches and micro-cinemas. Suparak founded the Pratt Institute Multi-Media Series in 1997, her videotape compilation Some Kind of Loving is produced by Joanie 4 Jackie, and Carnegie Mellon University published Boredom Notebook, made in collaboration with students. This summer The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco will begin a 10-week museum run of Looking is better than feeling you. She has also put together shows for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, The Knitting Factory, The New York Underground Film Festival, and the improvisational musical group The Boxhead Ensemble.

Right this second Astria Suparak is traveling across the Americas on her sixth tour in two years, with custom shows curated for Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and Yale University School of Architecture. When at home alone she works on an upcoming show of drawings and projections.
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Artists included in previous screenings:
Patty Chang

Eliete Mejorado - performer, composer. Born 1967 in São Paulo, Brazil. Eliete has been taking part in several art projects working with filmmakers, avant-garde musicians, writers and performance artists between South America and Europe. In 1995 she began producing her own performances seting up the performance duo Tetine. With Tetine, created performances, videos, films, installations, soundtracks and recorded 5 CDs. Recently Eliete has been awarded The Bolsa Vitae Brazil for her project about bureaucracy in Brazil alongside Tetine. She's currently living and working in London.

To artists: To update your bio, please email us.


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