Jana Wisniewski - Preview - WomenCinemakers 2018

Jana Wisniewski REVISION

Women Cinemakers meets

Jana Wisniewski Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

We are on stage everywhere, in town, in internet. We are visitor and performer. Some female dancer had fun to be on stage in front of a famous theatre in Vienna. They look at their I-Pad´s like in a mirror. The idea was, to mix the viewpoint from the I-Pad with my viewpoint with the camera.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com

Hello Jana and welcome to we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. Are there any experiences that particularly influenced you as an artist?

Moreover, how does your direct the trajectory of your artistic research?

I was educated at the University of Applied Arts in

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Vienna, Austria, and I’ve worked in a variety of media, so videos are not the only art form I use to express my vision. As a child, I received Austrian citizenship after being stateless for several years, and this experience as foreigner had a impact on my life.

Over the years, I’ve been influenced and inspired by a variety of social and technological movements. I’m impressed by small, intelligent machines so I try to understand them, and work with them, but I don’t consider myself a slave to technology. We live on a planet with plants and animals, and we can only be successful as long as

Women Cinemakers we coexist, and don’t destroy the resources we live from.

This theme was the topic of a webwork http://e-motionartbook.com/FormWien/I.N.S.I.D.E.G.R.E.E.N.htm.

Additionally, I work with up-and-coming strategies in art, and whether it is building websites or furniture, working with Augmented Reality or other technological innovations, I try to explore that media form and then decide whether I want to stick with it for years or let it be a short experiment. For more specific information on what I’ve worked on over the years, you can look at my personal website (http://e-motion-artbook.com/).

For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting dance short film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at . We have appreciated the way your work brings the nature of relationship between the body and its surroundings to a new level of significance, unveiling the ubiquitous bond between the individual and outside reality: when walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea?

In the idea of “open space,” I would definitely include the internet. To work with both together -reality and any transfer through internet- is contemporary art. During a

Women Cinemakers discussion with a contemporary artist-group, Celle, I met the female leader of Raumspiele. They dance on remarkable places to remember political actions. I asked them to work with me. It is not the first time I was in connection with dancers, once I asked (as a curator) a couple of dancers to work with Herbert W. Franke for an exhibition, because he wanted to transform the movement to media art. The main idea was to put together professional dancers, artistic performers, and a vision as a filmmaker to combine the real movement through a camera and the sight of the iPad, while dancing. The dancers would walk with the iPad as if with a mirror and the mirror would be creating the film. And, it should happen in front of a famous theater: what normally is inside should be outside, as a free performance in open space.

How do you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the videos and ? How much importance does play in your process?

The truth is, we decided to make a first experiment on the day when the 4 black ladies made that kind of remembering work nearby and afterwards we thought we would like to try something. We worked in front of the Burgtheater, because I wanted it to take place in front of the stage with the Burgtheater as a scenery.

The dancers tried to get ready with the technology,

with two fake and two real iPads. We had music, but then nearby a sports event made a great noise, so we had Zumba and one woman liked it and started to dance. The female performer was not there, but at least I had some material, which I did not use immediately.

With Raumspiele we did some other nice things, like an intervention combined with a discussion in KĂźnstlerhaus Vienna and an architectural intervention in front of the DC Tower Vienna, but we drifted apart later, because the really big things we

dreamt of, could not be realized. Three films are the result of our work together. EGO was only made of the files from the iPad www.vimeo.com/120096343, TABLET was made in the exhibition in the KĂźnstlerhaus www.vimeo.com/118806448, and MIRROR STAGE was made only with my camera and filmed in front of the DC Tower Vienna www.vimeo.com/118806448. Later, I came back to my first intention and made ON STAGE IN OPEN SPACE, free of any connection or event.

We have appreciated the way you have provided your short film with such a poetic quality, capable of establishing emotional involvement in the viewers: what were your when conceiving the choreography and what did you aim at triggering in the spectatorship?

For me, art is not journalism, it is more of a fairytale. I want to show that we are always on stage, in reality and in the internet. There is always a mirror,

in reality and in the internet, and that life is a dance, in which we are both included and excluded.

To look at our interactions with devices is becoming more common, so I think people will understand.

Inquiring into the duality of being visitor and performer at the same time, highligths fact that in our media driven society we are on stage everywhere, in town, in internet. Marina Abramovic once remarked the importance of not just making

work but ensuring that it’s seen : how is in your opinion online technopshere affecting by the audience? Do you think that today is easier to a particular niche of viewers or that online technology will allow artist to extend to a broader number of viewers the interest towards a particular theme?

Unfortunately the internet is not a great help for art and especially for media art. Most topics are cats, weapons, cars, and lots of movies are about „make up“ or something like that. But we can still survive by accident, or get famous. We find what we look for. We can find wonderful art-movies in internet with only a few clicks. And we can see many documentary videos; I find the internet much more interesting than TV. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes.

German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that " ": as a multidisciplinary artist deeply involved in dance, how do you consider the relation between of the concepts you explore in your artistic research and of your practice? Moreover, do you think that your

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being a woman provides your artistic research with some special value?

To use one’s own body for creative processes is very common, because it is the easiest way to get somebody to realize what you want to say. I did that often, but I have respect for the “experts,� so when it comes to dance, I prefer a professional dancer; and when it comes to music, I prefer a real musician. Women move like women: I can see no need to move like a man or a machine. I therefore appreciate that the 4 black ladies are feminine in their movement. But, again, the concept is to tell the truth about our relationship to technology and life, not to tell something special about woman specifically. features essential cinematography with a keen eye to details and we have really appreciated your successful attempt to capture between gestures and urban environment: how do you consider the relationship between space and movement playing within your artistic research?

More and more I have found that movies give me better possibilities to realize the connection from space to movement, because people are to lazy to look at the sensitive spot on a webwork, to go forward, but a movie

just plays without additional work.

It's no doubt that artistic collaborations are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about the collaborative nature of your work? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two or more artists?

That was my overall dream, to collaborate with artists or other professionals. But that is very often not easy. If you can pay for the contribution, it is easy, but if you have to develop a concept together just to get the money, often the concept is somewhere else and you are in the middle of nowhere.

We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from ', however in the producing something ' last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's

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Women Cinemakers your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field?

Over time, more and more women have been able to enter into almost every profession. The best thing is to work with them on that professional level, without mentioning friendship or female power or whatever. If we are a good fit based on shared interests, we should just be able to work together, regardless of gender.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Jana. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?

How do you see your work evolving?

I am not able to see into the future, I hope the future will find me.

Maybe I’ll connect to some more videos I’ve made previously, self-imaging as a flag www.vimeo.com/137703314 or prosit profit www.vimeo.com/192448640, but I never share works-in-progress, only things which are done.

An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com