Janet Biggs
	Janet Biggs talked to us from New York, where she was busy getting ready for the art fairs in Miami. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Can you tell me something about your early background? I understand you didn’t immediately come to video. JANET BIGGS: I have an undergrad degree in painting and sculpture, and I have half a Masters in glassblowing, and I really approached video because of an idea. My pieces have always been idea-driven; I don’t consider myself media-specific, I still don’t consider myself media-specific, even though I’ve been making video work for about 10 years now. I had a moment when I wanted to explore an early experience with power, and video just seemed like the best way to realize the idea. So, considering the fact that I had no idea what I was doing, I’m pleased that I was able to enter into it, and realize the piece through that medium. The first piece I did in video was titled ‘Girls and Horses,’ and it was a ridiculous piece. If I’d known what I was doing, I probably wouldn’t have approached it in the same way, because it ended up being a 11-channel piece, and it had 3 projectors suspended from the ceiling, all on rotating platforms, so that the video projections would rotate around on the walls, and they were all at different speeds, so the projections would run over themselves at times. And then 8 monitors running down the center of the gallery. And when I first started talking to people about how to produce that piece, the general consensus response was: you can’t do that. And I think being naïve to the medium actually helped me in that case. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Do you still paint and sculpt, and do you feel you make connections between those mediums? JANET BIGGS: Not so much. I’ve started doing some performances, and I think my connection to other mediums is coming out in the performances more than in my studio practice. I’m actually working on a piece right now that I think an ice sculpture needs to be a part of. And that’ll be an element in a performance, and it’ll exist after the performance as a sculptural element until it falls apart. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Can you tell me about Anana Dream? Where did the title come from? JANET BIGGS: Anana is the Inuit name for ‘pretty.’ And the polar bears at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where I did the filming—the female polar bear’s name is Anana. And so that’s where the title came from. LUMEN ECLIPSE: What is the piece of music that you used? JANET BIGGS: That’s actually from the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner, and it’s the Vangelis piece that is the love song. I was working on another piece that was titled Like Tears in Rain, and shooting all the footage for that piece, and Anana Dream kind of came out of working on that larger piece. I’ve always been a kind of closet fan of cyber-punk and science fiction, and I love Ridley Scott’s portrayal of this dystopian future, and decided that I wanted to use that as an overarching theme for not only Anana Dream, but also this other piece. And I think my connection to it is even deeper for me than just the film Blade Runner; I’ve been a fan of Philip K. Dick’s book, which Blade Runner is based on, and he touches on some themes that have run throughout a couple projects of mine, and certainly are themes that I’m drawn to, repeatedly. He asks what makes us human; he lists three things that he feels really define us in terms of our humanity, one being our ability to have empathy, our ability to have memories or to construct memories, and then our connection with animals. So that all kind of fed into producing Anana Dream, and my desire to produce Anana Dream. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Was it easy to film at the Lincoln Park Zoo? JANET BIGGS: They were wonderful in terms of getting access. Like many places, when you’re trying to get access, they were concerned about commercial applications, but once they understood the project they were completely supportive. Anana and the other polar bear—his name is Lee—were born in captivity and raised in captivity, and they’re both now reaching puberty, so they’re going to have to separate them. They want to breed them. And to ensure that they don’t breed with each other until they find a new place for them, they tried to do a Norplant implant in Anana, and she actually chewed it out of herself. When I was at the Lincoln Park Zoo they were so generous with letting me have access to trainers, and just knowledge about polar bears and their role as predators, that they’re the only true predators of man. And then this kind of information: what it’s like to try and breed and keep the bears going in a captive environment. It was really fascinating, and definitely added to a sort of sad Romanticism that the piece took on. Anana Dream really started to talk about things that can never be, and loss of things unknown. LUMEN ECLIPSE: The piece is long enough that you really start to notice the repetitiveness of their swimming. JANET BIGGS: I’m completely drawn to that kind of synchronized activity. I’ve used synchronized sports throughout a lot of my later pieces, and when I first saw them—well, I knew that bears do this in captivity, they exhibit this repetitive behavior, and when I first got there, it’s so beautiful and it really looks choreographed, but by hour five, when I’m still filming and they’re still doing that same, synchronized pattern, you realize that this is complete captive behavior, and it changes. LUMEN ECLIPSE: And they’ll continue swimming like that, in an enclosure like that, for the rest of their lives? JANET BIGGS: Yes, that’s true, you know I really don’t think there’s any chance that they’ll be released back into the wild. I think that that is their life. They’re hoping to be able to breed them. I don’t want the piece to be a comment on zoos; I think that’s a really complex topic about a zoo’s role in trying to keep species going outside of their natural environment, and not one that I necessarily want to address with this piece. But yes, I think that is the extent of their future. LUMEN ECLIPSE: You’ve used animals in many of your pieces; how do they function for you in your work? JANET BIGGS: Depending on the piece, one thing I’ve enjoyed about using animals in my work is that I find them fairly mutable; at times they can be foils, at times we can have a different kind of connection to them. I’m fascinated by the need to anthropomorphize animals, to try to understand them only in terms of our knowledge, and I think it is an attempt to understand animals more fully, and by extension understand ourselves more fully. LUMEN ECLIPSE: What kinds of spaces and screens do you like to work for? JANET BIGGS: I have a real affinity and respect for film, and the Hollywood notion of film (although not necessarily the studio practice notion of film), and because of that I really was drawn initially to the video installation versus the single channel piece. I find that a lot of single channel video is incredibly passive-aggressive; you’re placed in a room, and sort of told to stay there for however long the artist would like. And unlike Hollywood films, it doesn’t have the structure with the money shot and the reward at the end. I think, obviously, when a single-channel piece is done well it’s fantastic, but I really like a kind of shared authorship with my audience, which is allowed in video installation in a way that can’t happen with a single channel piece. So that was my entry into video, was allowing the viewer to become a participant, and that they construct the narrative by the way that they move through the piece. With the single channel, I really do feel a different kind of responsibility, and I think initially the pieces were much like Anana Dream in that there is a presented image, not necessarily a specific narrative that demands the viewer stay for a certain amount of time. I may be getting closer to that now – I guess I’m boldly embracing my passive-aggressive side. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Have you done much single-channel work? JANET BIGGS: I’m doing more and more single-channel pieces. I still really prefer the installation; I loved what happens when you work with architecture. My studio is not huge, so many of my pieces I don’t actually get to see until I finally install them, and that moment of ‘is this going to be successful, or is this going to suck,’ is great for me. Needing to think quickly on your feet in terms of the piece’s response to the architecture, if it isn’t going the way you want it to go, is always exciting. But, you know, I also need to pay the rent, and single-channels are certainly more lucrative for me. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Do you expect changes in technology and industry that might affect, say, movie distribution, to have effects on your work and your practice? JANET BIGGS: You know, I think it’s naïve to think it won’t affect my work, but I probably would prefer to remain somewhat naïve. I think that certain pieces really demand a scale, and that part of the reason that they are a piece of art is that all things are considered. When it’s put on Youtube, often the quality is lost and certainly the scale is changed, and I’m ok with that as long as it’s part of the original intent. I have a more difficult time when a piece is intended to have a relationship to the viewer in terms of its scale, and that’s changed by its presentation. LUMEN ECLIPSE: Is New York a good place to be an artist? JANET BIGGS: I love it. I think there’s a lot of stimulation here, certainly a lot of art stimulation to see, but I find culturally it’s a place that helps generate ideas. And I also have a kind of perfect life in terms of New York because I get out often and go ride horses and do things that a lot of New Yorkers don’t get to do. So I have to have both sides at once in my life. LUMEN ECLIPSE: How do you connect with other artists? It is easy to form communities? JANET BIGGS: When I first came to New York, I really had a strong sense of community with other artists in terms of ideas, not in terms of medium. That’s really developed along the way, much later. I still always would rather talk ideas than tech, but I’ve now met some groups—there’s a group online called PAM, the Perpetual Art Machine, and I think that they’re doing really interesting work, and I’m excited to be included in their projects, and find that they also are concept driven, but they’re concept driven and they can also embrace the technical side at the same time, and make that part of the whole. And other than that, I have done screenings in video-specific fairs, that kind of thing, but I still find when I talk to other artists we don’t really talk about tech, other than the ‘how do you do that; where do you buy that’ kind of talk. We really find that we get rooted in what’s behind the piece. LUMEN ECLISPE: Do you have any recommendations for our readers? JANET BIGGS: I would definitely say that anyone who hasn’t seen Blade Runner should definitely see it. The original release, and the reissued versions. My initial experience was to see Blade Runner when it first came out, but I think it’s a real treat that they keep releasing it and changing it, and it’s a testimony to the strength of that film that that keeps happening. You get to relive it over and over.