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Lisa Barcy
Woman Without a Past
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Jesse Seay
Likes to Do Other Things
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MakeOut Club
Grad Screening @ Busker
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Film, Video and New Media Faculty
Gregg Bordowitz, Associate Professor FVNM
email
www
About:
I’m an artist, an activist, a writer, a filmmaker — I’m
not interested in being one thing. I guess you could say I want to be
an engaged intellectual — to contribute to a body of knowledge
that leads to actions and ideas.
I was hired in the film department, which is now the Department of
Film, Video, and New Media. But the School is fundamentally interdisciplinary,
so I’ve taught classes for the departments of writing, art history,
whatever makes sense — and I’ve taught at every level, freshman,
senior, graduate. There’s no stagnant uniformity among the faculty
here. The School works hard to maintain a diversity of ideas, modes
of practice, aesthetic commitments. So
students have a huge range of contending ideas to choose from.
I have a reputation for running a demanding class. But you can’t be
demanding without being compassionate. So I make a deal with my students.
I say, ‘I expect a lot from you. But the harder you work, the harder
I’ll work to help you. And I won’t go forward until I’m sure everyone
knows what we’re talking about.’ I try to inspire students
to embrace knowledge, to claim
it as their own.
I work with a lot of theory in my classes, but I approach it irreverently.
I tell my students, 'Don't adopt a theory because it’s fashionable.
Take what’s useful.’ And I encourage a healthy disrespect for
boundaries; I make no distinctions between high and low culture. Think
of Walter Benjamin, one of the century’s major theorists. Here's a
guy who spent most of
his time walking through arcades, which are basically shopping malls.
Walter Benjamin was a mall rat. I want my students — as artists
and thinkers — to engage with their culture.
I made my first tape in 1986, when a lot of my friends were getting
sick and the AIDS activist movement was exploding. I was involved with
ACT/UP when it started. I spent seven years documenting the movement,
working with a few friends in a collective called Testing the Limits.
We thought: This is history. We’re documenting a revolution.
Our work was shown on television, in museums, in living rooms, in community
centers. We realized we could have our feet in both worlds, the art
world and the activist world.
My first solo museum exhibition was at the Museum of Contemporary Art
earlier this year. The show was manifold: It included a gallery exhibition,
the premiere of my latest video, Habit — a large portion of which
was shot in South Africa, at the Durban AIDS Conference in July 2000 — and
two public forums. I was thrilled with the turnout; the crowds were
very diverse. That’s the radical potential of new art: It cuts across
societal boundaries. An audience doesn’t exist in advance of a work
of art — art creates its own audience.”
CV summary:
Associate Professor; Film, Video, and New Media (1998). Studied: New York University;
Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, NY; School of Visual Arts, NY. Concurrent position: Faculty, Whitney
Museum Independent Study Program. Exhibitions/ Screenings: The Gene Siskel Film Center,
Chicago; New York Jewish Film Festival; PBS broadcast; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sundance Film Festival;
Whitney Biennial, NY. Awards: ÐíJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship;
Jerome Foundation Grant; Art Matters Grant; New York State Council for the Arts Distribution Grant; Banff Centre
for the Arts Residency; Rockefeller Intercultural Film/Video Arts Fellowship.
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