Women Cinemakers meets
Tizzy Canucci Lives and works in Ulverston, UK Tess Baxter makes video art out of (rather than within) Second Life, working under the pseudonym of Tizzy Canucci. Her work is not just a recording of ‘the game’, as she is interested in extending the art form and the combinational possibilities. She montages material filmed in the virtual world with found material, as well as mixing it with itself. This includes still images, literature, archive film, poetry, music and sound, put into dialogue with the virtual world material. Although video art is often regarded as a visual medium, she sees it equally as an auditory one, and a sensory one through empathetic embodiment. She also uses it as a means of thinking about virtual space alongside actual world issues in a mostly nonverbal way. She publishes her video work, 40 pieces now, online on Vimeo. The Digital Pilgrims is an example of how Tess crosses time and space and virtualities, as the words of Chaucer are reapplied to characters in a virtual space. A public domain reading of Chaucer in Middle English blends with and into contemporary classical creative commons music. The descriptions of the pilgrims are sometimes the words of Chaucer, sometimes blended with new text to make parallels and comparisons, and sometimes rewritten to make a direct comment on today’s worlds. Ornamental initial letters were adapted from British Library scans of Victorian versions of Chaucer’s books. Published under a Creative Commons license, the video recirculates creativity. Tess was brought up in Lancashire and now lives in the Lake District, in the north of England. Seeing her older sister was better at drawing, she took little interest in art at school and turned to three dimensional work. During the 1980s she worked as a model maker. After a period in local politics, in 2001 she set up in business to publish her inventively combined writing and photography about local food traditions and landscape. In 2009 she graduated from UCLan with a BA in Sociology, and the following year with an MA from Manchester University in Gender, Sexuality and Culture. She is currently at Lancaster University working towards a PhD in Contemporary Art. Her past – three dimensional model making, social and political concern, editing the graphical and verbal form – all come through in her machinima, as does her long fascination with animation. But her influences are wide and draw from the history of film, poetry, music and literature
An interview by Francis Quettier and Dora Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com
Hello Tizzy and welcome to : before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we
would invite to our readers to visit in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production. We would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. You hold a BA in Sociology, and an MA from Manchester University in Gender,