Category: Artist Interviews

Over the next several weeks, McEvoy Arts interviews each of the four artists from The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program whose work is on display in In This Light, a virtual and offsite exhibition presented in conjunction with the Minnesota Street Project’s group exhibition Invincible Summer.

Our interview with Charlene Tan concludes the series. Make a reservation to visit the exhibition in person here.

McEvoy Arts: Can you share a bit about your practice and background?

Charlene Tan: I’m an interdisciplinary artist with formal training in the History of Contemporary Art from San Francisco Art Institute, where my focus on new genres/new media ultimately left me conflicted about the dominant narrative, and how I define my work relative to that. I’m currently working on a series, Research and Remembering, through which I’m investigating, physically deconstructing, and reconstructing patterns from indigenous weaving traditions of the Philippines. By learning a cultural language lost to me, I found this work to be about rediscovering and decolonizing my identity as a person of an immigrant diaspora.

McEvoy Arts: As an artist in The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program at 1240 Minnesota Street, the building’s temporary closure has forced you to embrace new working accommodations. How have you coped with the isolation of social distancing and uncertainty?

CT: It has been difficult transitioning from a very social, energizing art-making environment to an isolating one, where I find myself at home making work in my small bedroom and, at times, totally taking over the living room. To cope, I’ve sought connections through Zoom calls or FaceTime sessions with many in my social constellation and with whom I have found love and support. I’ve been managing my own actions and creating structure for survival, actively trying not to become paralyzed by adversity, and being honest when I feel overwhelmed in the face of uncertainty.

McEvoy Arts: Has the onset of the pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement offered you new insights into preexisting bodies of work or motivation for new projects?

CT: Both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have motivated me to increase my participation in the art community as a way of helping to foster anti-racist change, counteract privilege, and nurture inclusive opportunities. I know how to demolish, build, and organize, and it is time for me to be that POC woman who will not be diminished by those blinded and deafened by hate. Black Lives Matter makes me hopeful about much-needed reform for our art institutions.

McEvoy Arts: How does your work on view in In This Light engage with the notion of resilience? When, where, and how was your work produced?

CT: The works on view are literal acts of resilience—deeply personal fights to reclaim my ancestral, culturally situated aesthetics from the often oppressive aesthetic values I was taught and internalized. This work reflects the value I place on my multiracial identity, and the process of reclamation, renegotiation, and reordering that I must do as I go about my work as an artist. In a sense, I feel like Research and Remembering, Pink Tapioca (2020) which I made by hand-gluing thousands of tiny, pink tapioca pearls onto a panel while sheltering-in-place, was in itself an act of not giving up. Using a pair of tweezers, I picked up and dipped in glue each of the tapioca pearls from which I assembled the pattern, putting each individual ball where it needed to be. I brought a semblance of order to the composition, but also to what felt like an especially chaotic time. I worked through some sleepless nights, gluing until I was so tired that my mind relaxed and I was able to reminisce about the past and feel a sense of hope.

McEvoy Arts: Do you have any suggestions for artists wrestling with making work amidst collective anxiety and uncertainty?

CT: Keep going, call/text people, help each other.

McEvoy Arts: What’s been most striking to you about the impact this moment is having on the making, presentation, and consumption of culture? What are your hopes for the future?

CT: I’m appreciating efforts made by galleries and art centers to engage with the public through digital platforms and sharing exhibition images. In the pre-pandemic world, I had issues with the lack of public engagement on digital platforms, especially for people who are less mobile or can’t afford to fly around the world.

McEvoy Arts: What is the responsibility of the artist in times like these? Has your sense of the role of art in society shifted?

CT: In my opinion, an artist’s responsibility right now is to survive, support others, and be an agent of change. Yes—my sense of the role of art in society has shifted—to one of hope.

McEvoy Arts: Lastly, is there a piece of art, literature, film, or music that has been a comforting touchstone for you through the pandemic?

CT: Currently, I’ve been taking comfort in online-based class lectures, in particular on the Bubonic plague. It helps a lot to see similarities of how society changed during those past plague years.

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Charlene Tan’s interdisciplinary artworks focus on the immigrant diaspora and its repercussions, post-assimilation identity, and investigations of nationalism and cultural heritage. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, including Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; and Blank Space Gallery, Oakland. She received her BA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Born in Houston Texas, she lived in the Philippines before moving to San Francisco.

Over the next several weeks, McEvoy Arts interviews each of the four artists from The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program whose work is on display in In This Light, a virtual and offsite exhibition presented in conjunction with the Minnesota Street Project’s group exhibition Invincible Summer.

Make a reservation to visit the exhibition in person here.

McEvoy Arts: Can you share a bit about your practice and background?

Richard T. Walker: I grew up in Shropshire, England. In 2007, I moved from London to San Francisco. I had been making work that meditated on the legacy of the American West from a British perspective. Once I was located on the West Coast, I had first-hand access to the vast open spaces I had read about and seen on film. Being in the presence of these expanses conjured very visceral, emotional sensations. I was fascinated by the relationship these feelings held with the cultural phenomena of the American West that had been so successfully exported to the UK. But these feelings went further, they were complex and confusing. I could sometimes quantify them intellectually by relating them to myths of Hollywood and Romanticism, but their reach stretched into things that felt like ineffable reconfigurations of reality and questioned the mechanics of perception.

I realized that the space of landscape is a platform to interrogate facets of the human condition, for it exposes the figure, the body and the interiority of being. This space pulls it all apart and allows a moment to see the constituent elements for what they are before they glue back together again. It is this juncture, this fulcrum, that continues to be a focus in my practice.

“The notion of solitude in my work feels more enhanced. Expanses seem more expansive, everything seems turned up and tuned in a little more.”

McEvoy Arts: As an artist in The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program at 1240 Minnesota Street, the building’s temporary closure has forced you to embrace new working accommodations. How have you coped with the isolation of social distancing and uncertainty?

RW: At first I wasn’t really coping in terms of art-making. The world suddenly spun much faster and it was hard to keep balance. The ability to zone in, to focus, to look and think about something in a way that allows an idea to unfold and reveal itself wasn’t there anymore. Perhaps this was because everything was unfolding or unwinding, so the notion of picking something apart felt like the inverse of what was desired. The questions one asks in their studio about the characteristic of this or the significance of that seemed insufficient and also less relevant. This said, the undoing of normal life outside the studio is bizarrely reflected in the intentional dismantling of something in the studio. I think I need to embrace this parallel.  

McEvoy Arts: Has the onset of the pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement offered you new insights into preexisting bodies of work or motivation for new projects?

RW: Making my work is a solitary activity. I go into landscapes by myself and report on my findings through visual means. As a straight white man, I can feel somewhat safe going into the depths of rural California, which is a privilege not afforded to everyone. This is something I have considered before, but it now feels more pronounced within the work, as does the problematic associations with wilderness and the politics of landscape. The notion of solitude in my work feels more enhanced. Expanses seem more expansive, everything seems turned up and tuned in a little more. Perhaps it is in reflection to the domestic spaces that we have been inhabiting so intensely.  The city has shifted away from being a city and has become a coarse collection of buildings, roads, cars and people. Nature, on the other hand, still maintains its position. The only change to nature is that it has new emphasis: it is even more of a respite, even more a refuge.

McEvoy Arts: How does your work on view in In This Light engage with the notion of resilience? When, where, and how was your work produced?

RW: The disparate particles of light emanating from the slide projector bulb are forced to coalesce through the gaps in a slide that projects the word “ourself” onto an image of Mount Shasta. The image is made up of two collaged photographs: one color, one black and white. Combined, these elements form a gesture of togetherness, of overcoming separation and the trappings of singularity. But also, and importantly, they instill a reflection of the aggregate power of words and language to form meaning and action – a collective symbiotic confluence of gestures. The work was produced in 2019, but in light of the current situation, the ideas within it seem to garner new and expanded relevance.

McEvoy Arts: Do you have any suggestions for artists wrestling with making work amidst collective anxiety and uncertainty?

RT: For me, the following has helped: “Keep it open, allow fluidity and repetition. Direct it outward and then inward, not inward then outward. Find meaning in the search for meaning. Find resolution in the questions and give less weight to the answers. Act like it matters less than you know it does.”  

McEvoy Arts: What’s been most striking to you about the impact this moment is having on the making, presentation, and consumption of culture? 

RW: With two small children, I don’t consume as much culture as I’d like, so this is a tricky one to answer, and honestly think it may be too soon to make an assessment. However, I know that people are fed up with Zoom and fed up with looking at everything online, and so I think the importance of witnessing and consuming culture in the real world has become more apparent than ever. Will this change things when we enter back into the world of physical art spaces, theatres, and galleries? I’m not sure. One thing I hope is that museums restrict taking photos in the galleries and that more emphasis is spent on encouraging visitors to share moments with the work, unmediated. 

McEvoy Arts: What are your hopes for the future?

RW: That social distancing goes back to being optional. That Trump loses. That we collectively feel the tangible urgency of saving our planet. That we reopen our borders to those in need. That resolving social inequality and racial injustice is prioritized in all communities and that we have free national healthcare ASAP. Also, I hope the future provides a substantial and significant increase in government funding for the arts.    

McEvoy Arts: What is the responsibility of the artist in times like these?

RW: Each artist has their own role that is personal to them. For me, I see the work I put into the world as being a way to communicate something universal, even if what is being communicated are the challenges inherent in communication. In acknowledging the limitations and the fallibility of the individual, I want to produce art that brings people together in collective experience. To the best of my ability I would like to make work that prioritizes experiences that reflect on the nature of experience itself. I want to produce work with multiple entry points that emphasizes the universality of being human, of having consciousness, of feeling, having emotions, of existing. And how the power of the visual enables us to share and communicate who and what we are.  

McEvoy Arts: Has your sense of the role of art in society shifted?

RW: My wife Blaine Bookey is an attorney battling the current Republican administration for the rights of asylum seekers and refugees. Her daily job is directly helping people in desperate circumstances. In relation to this, the various decisions and deliberations that occur in my studio seem somewhat indulgent. It’s something I have often thought about, but now it feels particularly acute. However, in defiance of the question mark that looms large I keep going to the studio and I keep making work. I can’t articulate it in a way that feels satisfactory, but my own actions tell me that art still has a role. How that role has changed is something that continues to unfold. What is clear is that the role of art should be one that is broad, inclusive and doesn’t rely so heavily on wealth and the economically privileged. The elitism of the art world has always been problematic and now it feels especially so.  

McEvoy Arts: Lastly, is there a piece of art, literature, film, or music that has been a comforting touchstone for you through the pandemic?

RW: Eluvium’s Pianoworks has provided a needed center of late, when all else has appeared to be drifting endlessly outward. 

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Richard T. Walker employs a variety of media including video, music, photography, sculpture and performance. These media are often intermixed to explore and question the experience of the individual within the natural landscape. His work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kadist Foundation, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21), amongst other institutions. He has exhibited and performed worldwide including at The Contemporary Austin; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; The Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; the Witte De With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Walker has been an Irvine Fellow at the Montalvo Art Center as well as participated in residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He received an Artadia Award in 2009. He received his MA from Goldsmiths College and lives in San Francisco.

Over the next several weeks, McEvoy Arts interviews each of the four artists from The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program whose work is on display in In This Light, a virtual and offsite exhibition presented in conjunction with the Minnesota Street Project’s group exhibition Invincible Summer.

Make a reservation to visit the exhibition in person here.

McEvoy Arts: Can you share a bit about your practice and background? 

Alison Pebworth: Originally from the piney woods of East Texas, I have been living and working as an artist in San Francisco since 1991.

McEvoy Arts: As an artist in The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program at 1240 Minnesota Street, the building’s temporary closure has forced you to embrace new working accommodations. How have you coped with the isolation of social distancing and uncertainty?

AP: Isolation isn’t an issue for me—I’m a hermit by nature.  But the closure of the studios definitely affected my practice as I could no longer work large, dirty, or have access to shop tools. Projects I was working on were cancelled or postponed, so there was definitely a period of reorienting myself to what I could do from home from a desk. I had already been feeling a need to weed out distractions so I embraced the opportunity to find the space I needed by turning inward and developing badly needed meditation and writing habits that I hope to take with me to the other side of this pandemic.

McEvoy Arts: Has the onset of the pandemic and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement offered you new insights into preexisting bodies of work or motivation for new projects?  

AP: It takes time to process important events- the more profound the event the more useless artists feel to meet the profundity of it. However, both the pandemic and the problems of white supremacy and cultural segregation have given me stronger resolve to put more focus to building long term visionary projects and less importance to career achievements.

McEvoy Arts: How does work on view in In This Light engage with the notion of resilience? When, where, and how was your work produced? 

AP: Feeling inadequate to meet the big questions, I started looking at what I could do in and with people in my  own neighborhood. In order to keep my hand engaged in “making,” I started using my handmade walnut ink to make stains on aged paper I had been collecting and then using colored pencils to pull forms out of it. I had to let go of creating anything “good” and just think of these “drawings” as meditation exercises: metaphorical acts of pulling form out of chaos. I called them “spirit drawings,” since the more I thought, the worse they got. 

Over the past year, I have been challenging myself to create installations in 24 hours using the many materials accumulated in my studio space at 1240 Minnesota Street. These exercises helped me find connections between seemingly disparate ideas. While sheltering in place, I occasionally helped Andrew McKinley (the founder of Adobe books) sort through three huge warehouses of books, and in the process salvaged old books and collected random passages. When the call for work went out for In This Light, I initially didn’t feel like I had anything to contribute. But then a narrative started to emerge between the passages I was collecting, and the ephemerality of the old books and paper I was using, and everything clicked: I can do this! I added selections from handwritten cursive letters I had been collecting as a third paper element, and over 24 hours in the exhibition space, I channelled personal and collective anxieties over the past few months into this installation. Wire and paint salvaged from the MSP studios became the connecting element.

McEvoy Arts: Do you have any suggestions for artists wrestling with making work amidst collective anxiety and uncertainty? 

AP: Just do something every day. When you can’t think, feel, and let go of the pretense of making anything good. The act is more important than the outcome.

McEvoy Arts: What’s been most striking to you about the impact this moment is having on the making, presentation, and consumption of culture? What are your hopes for the future? 

AP: I don’t take it lightly that it was a privilege to even be in this show. My hope is that the forced pause that the pandemic brought has a lasting effect on our priorities and that we never return to what we previously thought was “normal.” 

McEvoy Arts: What is the responsibility of the artist in times like these? Has your sense of the role of art in society shifted? 

AP: The only responsibility I see is to keep making something out of nothing and facing the unknown whether you’ve been granted the permission, space or resources to do so or not. I’m learning to let go of wondering what my role as an artist is and trust that the small actions and I make  in my immediate world will prepare me for the visionary role I aspire to, should it arrive.

McEvoy Arts: Lastly, is there a piece of art, literature, film, or music that has been a comforting touchstone for you through the pandemic? 

AP: A phrase from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower—“We are Earthseed. The life which perceives itself. Changing.”—inspired the title of my installation for In This Light and ties together the found passages in the installation with the “spirit drawings,“ which feel like primordial earth seeds to me. Though my interest in Butler and her writing pre-dates the pandemic, her vision of Afro-Futurism feels particularly relevant in these uncertain times that our salvation lies in our ability to embrace change.

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Alison Pebworth is a San Francisco-based artist who engages painting, installation, and social interaction in her work. She has exhibited at Southern Exposure, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; the Oakland Museum of California; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and the New Children’s Museum, San Diego. She is the recipient of awards from The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The Center for Cultural Innovation, and The San Francisco Arts Commission. She has held residencies at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Recology, San Francisco; Ucross Foundation, Wyoming; and Space, British Columbia.

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from? 

Rosa John: I am a visual artist and filmmaker with a background in media studies, and I am based in Vienna, Austria. In my work I like to follow multiple paths, thematically and methodically. But my main project of the past few years has been a series of works concerning the idiosyncrasy of the camera. I’m interested in how the material and the visual co-depend. I am currently doing some interdisciplinary work on the materiality of the camera and the use of metaphoric language to grasp the logic of a camera. I am also working on finalizing my PhD project in which I am pursuing a media archaeological approach to the history of the camera. Specifically, I am investigating the history of the company Paillard Bolex and the Bolex H-16 camera and its implications on visual culture, particularly artists’ film.

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

RJ: The film Rote Linie (Red Line) incorporates elements like a performative and self-empowering way of filmmaking, the depiction of fragments of the human body, monothematic reduction, and perhaps also the visual balance of recognizable specifics and abstraction which are characteristic of my work. But it was not conceived as a conceptual addition to my body of work, it’s one in a variety of approaches or paths (as put above). Likewise, it’s not part of the previously mentioned project on the camera, but it does make use of camera-specific potentials. The film was shot on Super8, but I also work with 16mm or occasionally video. I love Super8, working with it is so flexible and playful and it opens up possibilities of very spontaneous filmmaking while still being film: a strip with tiny images on it. It is also a very simple film in the way that I worked with very basic means and by myself. I like to give myself that challenge to build something with minimal elements, things or people that are more or less already around.

I think ambiguity is the only valid definition of existence or identity.

Rosa John

SP: As you know, certainty is becoming our nemesis is inspired by McEvoy Arts’ exhibition Orlando, itself inspired by Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel and Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. What, if any, is your prior relationship to the work of these artists?

RJ: I’ve encountered these artists and their work (particularly regarding Orlando) many years ago as an adolescent or young adult, and have been intrigued by all of them—but I never yet engaged with their body of work profoundly, like really delved into it, as I would definitely like to. All the more so I was very happy that you as a programmer saw a connection. Such incidents assure me to keep going even if one sometimes doesn’t know where a path leads to.

SP: The program explores themes of transformation, self-invention, and gender performance and suggests that ambiguity of identity can operate as an emotional survival strategy and act of defiance. Are these themes something you consider in your artistic process or as central to your work exhibited here?

RJ: I think ambiguity is the only valid definition of existence or identity. Every other sort of definition of the human identity just feels like cutting off air to breathe. Acceptance of ambiguity is just so liberating in so many regards of life. That’s my personal opinion or feeling or experience, and as such it probably plays into my work while not being explicitly about it. Just as I am a political person but don’t consider my work to be political art, or wouldn’t even insist to call it art, while I just want to make films, photographs, objects, arguments as a means of communication.

SP: In what way has your inclusion in this program (or in conjunction with the larger Orlando exhibition) impacted your view of the work itself?

RJ: To make a film or any work of art implies a lot of decisions and thoughts, some more explicable than others. In that regard I often argue with myself while I also think it is important for me to trust something beyond knowledge or understanding. A film or any work of art can and should open up different layers in different contexts. So I definitely reacted to the idea of body norms and transformation when making the film, but it came from a very personal place and the inclusion in the program shows me that it speaks to a larger frame of discourse. Also the gender aspect is intrinsic to the work, it’s not a coincidence that I used a lipliner for the body marking rather than any other sort of pen. But when I made that film I wasn’t even sure if I was ever going to show it to anybody. So I guess the inclusion in this particular program and exhibition also supports that approach of sharing. We might not be that different in our doubts and wishes after all.

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art-making?

RJ: In the last weeks I’ve really felt a whole range of different sentiments, and then again there was not much time to give into these feelings as I am at home with a toddler and a preschool-aged kid during this lockdown, and they keep me occupied with the most ordinary things. And while my partner and I are splitting our efforts, it’s difficult to manage everyday tasks and also get work done. So far, I don’t think the current situation is impacting my personal approach to art-making, but it further challenges the circumstances that allow me to find the resources to make art. I do find comfort in a sort of general slow down and the questioning of values that is taking place, although I’m afraid it won’t have a lasting effect.

Besides that, experiencing art is a very sensual thing for me, and while all those current efforts in the digital realm are great, the situation only nourishes my need for haptic, site-specific, “odorant” encounters with art. 

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

RJ: I had several wonderful and informative experiences of art in the last few months (like retrospectives of Margaret Tait at the Austrian Filmmuseum, Maria Lassnig at Albertina, Constantin Brancusi at Bozar in Brussels). The most profound (and still ongoing) impact on me has come from the broad cultural discourse on climate change and ecological matters, which had developed so intently before the current public health crisis. It should prompt us to reevaluate ways of doing things that we have gotten so used to, to reevaluate what to wish for – and this concerns the art world just as much as everyone else.

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You can watch Rosa John’s Rote Linie (Red Line) (2015/2016) here. For more from McEvoy Arts at Home, click here.

Rosa John is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Vienna, Austria.

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from? 

Zackary Drucker: I am safe and secure at home in Los Angeles and very grateful for the many blessings in my life. It’s Earth Day (April 22, 2020), my dad’s birthday, and the kind of beautiful spring day that Los Angeles is famous for. There are carnations and poppies blooming in my garden, and pomegranate blossoms on the trees. For years I’ve been bouncing around, feeling like I’m maintaining a home that I don’t spend any time in, and now I’ve only got time at home. I’m working full-time (remotely) on a television project. I’m also writing a text for a performance and creating photographs at home. 

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

ZD: Unison is the last film I made with Flawless Sabrina, which also includes many of my biological and chosen family. Different phases of it were filmed over several years. The film explores traveling through time to witness one’s lineage, speaking to our predecessors and successors, and pondering what it means for a lineage to end with a gender non-conforming body.

Working within limitations can be a tremendous gift, and this is one of those times when artists who are really committed to shifting our consciousness and shattering our social mores will shine.

Zackary Drucker

SP: As you know, certainty is becoming our nemesis is inspired by McEvoy Arts’ exhibition Orlando, itself inspired by Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel and Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. What, if any, is your prior relationship to the work of these artists?

ZD: I’m a huge fan of Tilda Swinton starting from the moment that I saw Orlando when it was released on video in 1993 or 1994. As a young person in Syracuse NY, the media that I was able to find at the local independent video store and library were a lifeline, and Orlando was one of the first trans characters I recall seeing. It was so magical to see a boy character inexplicably become a woman overnight (if it were only that easy). It inspired my imagination and informed who I am today.

SP: The program explores themes of transformation, self-invention, and gender performance and suggests that ambiguity of identity can operate as an emotional survival strategy and act of defiance. Are these themes something you consider in your artistic process or as central to your work exhibited here?

ZD: Yes, I’m always looking for survival strategies from elders. I hope to live a long life. We should be so lucky. I think that trans people’s mere existence is a multiplicitous form of defiance everyday, even in isolation.

SP: In what way has your inclusion in this program (or in conjunction with the larger Orlando exhibition) impacted your view of the work itself?

ZD: Tilda Swinton, Aperture did an incredible job with Orlando—the Aperture edition and the exhibition. I’m thrilled that the exhibition has had a sustained life online where people can witness their brilliance.

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art-making?

ZD: I think the current health crisis deepens my commitment to human values. I think that it may change much of human behavior. There’s really no space for self-indulgence or narcissism in this time, and those are the values that our culture has been predicated on for many years. Working within limitations can be a tremendous gift, and this is one of those times when artists who are really committed to shifting our consciousness and shattering our social mores will shine. A lot of the bullshit will fall away. Few people will have time for petty, decorative or otherwise superfluous art.

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

ZD: This text message from Nao Bustamante on a neighborhood group thread today:

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You can watch Zackary Drucker’s Unison (2013–2017) here. For more from McEvoy Arts at Home, click here.

Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer for the docu-series This is Me, as well as a Producer on the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning series Transparent.

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from?

Antoinette Zwirchmayr: I have been isolated for about five weeks in the country, in a wine region in Austria, from which I can constantly observe Spring developing. My family has a house here, which we have been renovating for eleven years and is still far from finished. It is a versatile place. We have an outdoor kitchen, weeping willows and a fireplace. There is always something to do here. In the last few weeks I had the idea to write a script just for this house: the house as a starting point for a story.

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

AZ: Jean Luc Nancy was my first commissioned work. An Austrian museum and a festival gave me a complex two-page concept for an exhibition, some money and very little time. I was kind of irritated by this approach, and in the end they didn’t even integrate the film into the exhibition. I was under a lot of pressure and I started thinking about the outside all the time. The question “will they like the film?” was always floating in the room. This thought is deadly for the artistic process. You should always think the opposite: “Let’s hope they don’t like it!” Unfortunately, we all become so accommodating, we all want our work to be loved. But to return to the film, I have to say that I have become very fond of it. And I would never have made it, if the circumstances hadn’t been the way they were. So, in hindsight, I am grateful for everything.

Life as an artist is so uncertain and unstable. Every day, every year is different. You always have to keep busy and drive yourself, because nobody else does. You’re never used to a lot of money or other conveniences and in times like these, that can be an advantage.

Antoinette Zwirchmayr

SP: As you know, certainty is becoming our nemesis is inspired by McEvoy Arts’ exhibition Orlando, itself inspired by Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel and Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. What, if any, is your prior relationship to the work of these artists?

AZ: The invitation to this program was special in the sense that I have been working for several years with the writer Angelika Reitzer on a script for a feature film called I am my hideaway. We wrote the screenplay for Tilda Swinton from the very beginning. Of course, we know that she will never play the role, but she helps us imagine the main character. It is a feature film script for a sci-fi movie. It’s very uncertain if this film will ever be realized.

There is another temporal connection to the exhibition. A few months ago, the FIRST full-length work by a female composer was performed at the Vienna State Opera. The piece was Orlando. I was very disappointed that I could not see it. There were conspicuously few performances, and the tickets were expensive. It was a great spectacle and there was an exceptionally large media response. The conservative opera audience reacted with outrage, of course. The fact that it took so long for a woman to get such a commission is revealing—it shows, once again, how far we are from an equal society.

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art-making?

AZ: The current situation is particularly challenging for all of us. Nevertheless, as an artist one is equipped with certain survival strategies. Life as an artist is so uncertain and unstable. Every day, every year is different. You always have to keep busy and drive yourself, because nobody else does. You’re never used to a lot of money or other conveniences and in times like these, that can be an advantage.

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

AZ: Probably the most impressive pieces I saw last year were Bakchen, a theatre play directed by Ulrich Rasche and two dance pieces by choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. And there was a performance by Meg Stuart. Terrific! These are rare moments when you are in the theatre and wish it should never end. 

This crisis has shown me personally very clearly how important art is. I go to the theatre and cinema a lot. Often, I just took it for granted.

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You can watch Antoinette Zwirchmayr’s Jean Luc Nancy (2015) here. For more from McEvoy Arts at Home, click here.

Antoinette Zwirchmayr was born in 1989 in Salzburg, Austria and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her works have been featured internationally at festivals such as Berlinale and The Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from?

Rajee Samarasinghe: My name is Rajee Samarasinghe, writing from California. I am a filmmaker currently working on a feature documentary called Your Touch Makes Others Invisible which examines tortured interactions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in the aftermath of the Sri Lankan Civil War. I also have a new short film called The Eyes of Summer which was released earlier this year and has to do with my mother’s interactions with spirits during her childhood.

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

RS: The Queen of Material is one of my earliest films and I see traces of it in a lot of my subsequent work. It demonstrates, in it’s very brief runtime, a lot of my curiosities as a filmmaker in terms of hybrid forms and exploring certain aspects of Sri Lankan culture.

SP: As you know, certainty is becoming our nemesis is inspired by McEvoy Arts’ exhibition Orlando, itself inspired by Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel and Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. What, if any, is your prior relationship to the work of these artists?

RS: I have no prior relationship to the book nor the film adaptation, though I like the idea of exploring these works after the fact especially (perhaps unfairly) in relation to my own piece. I am, of course, familiar with those artists and have tremendous admiration for their work—I’ve been a Tilda Swinton fan forever!

SP: The program explores themes of transformation, self-invention, and gender performance and suggests that ambiguity of identity can operate as an emotional survival strategy and act of defiance. Are these themes something you consider in your artistic process or as central to your work exhibited here?

RS: These concepts certainly do speak to The Queen of Material and some of my other work like everyday star, for example. Often my works reveal themselves to me later in the process of creation, so these are themes I obviously care about innately and that pop up constantly throughout the things I make.

SP: In what way has your inclusion in this program (or in conjunction with the larger Orlando exhibition) impacted your view of the work itself?

RS: I think it’s unavoidable to not see my film through the scope of this program or any other program it’s in. The Queen of Material remains an inherently mysterious piece to me. I made it with the intention of not knowing too much about it. I started with the idea of creating a world using what I felt were the primary rhetorical devices in cinema: the portrait and the landscape—though in making landscapes out of saris that also reflected inward. So, over the years, works around the piece have certainly clued me into its inherent mystery but it still remains elusive and perhaps these clues are better left unsaid.

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art making?

RS: I just feel extremely lucky to have the basic things I need to survive like food and shelter. I should be editing a new short film of mine but I haven’t felt the urge. I’ve been more engaged with other people’s art and simply reflecting on my own practice. Though I hope to get back into it sooner than later.

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

RS: Very recently, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese and films and writing by Kathleen Collins. Quarantine honorable mentions to Moving On by Yoon Dan-bi, Prisoners by Denis Villeneuve and The Strange Case of Angelica by Manoel de Oliveira.

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Rajee Samarasinghe is a filmmaker born and raised in Sri Lanka. His work tackles contemporary sociopolitical conditions in Sri Lanka through the scope of his own identity and the deconstruction of ethnographic practices. 

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from?

Karly Stark: I am an experimental filmmaker and lecturer currently hunkered down in my apartment in Oakland, CA. I lecture in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State and teach courses that mostly focus on experimental filmmaking/production and queer/trans film theory, and my creative practice focuses on essay and diary filmmaking. I’m also currently working to incorporate hand-drawn rotoscope animation into my film practice, so that’s been taking up a lot of my time recently. 

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

KS: I made the problem is… as part of a larger collaborative project in an MFA class at San Francisco State back in 2015. The project was a filmic translation of a renga poem—a member of my cohort made a one-minute film then passed it along to the next person, who made a one-minute film commenting on that film, etc. I was chosen to make the tenth and final film, so it was tasked with encapsulating all that came before it. I’ve always gravitated towards poetry in my films—in essay or diary work I always include a poetic mode of address either through voiceover or text on screen. So, I wrote the problem is… as a way of drawing together the themes I saw at work in the piece as a whole, and for me it always makes sense to have it come from a single voice, to try to be intimate and universal at the same time. 

This film is probably the only thing I’ve made that doesn’t have an overtly queer voice, so it also feels really affirming to have it screen within a program and exhibition that facilitates that lens or reading.

Karly Stark

SP: The program explores themes of transformation, self-invention, and gender performance and suggests that ambiguity of identity can operate as an emotional survival strategy and act of defiance. Are these themes something you consider in your artistic process or as central to your work exhibited here?

KS: These are definitely huge themes in my work, and of course in my artistic process in general. I’m a non-binary queer filmmaker who makes really personal, lyrical films. My early films have all been vehicles to explore my relationship with my gender and sexuality—my first queer sexual experiences, my position as the first openly queer member of my family, etc. I also feel that queerness, ambiguity, transness, in all its forms and intricacies, is such a core part of who I am that it’s the filter through which I see everything. 

SP: In what way has your inclusion in this program (or in conjunction with the larger Orlando exhibition) impacted your view of the work itself?

KS: I feel so honored and humbled to see my work alongside artists that I’ve admired from afar for so long and whose work I find wildly inspirational, and also just so many queer artists. This film is probably the only thing I’ve made that doesn’t have an overtly queer voice, so it also feels really affirming to have it screen within a program and exhibition that facilitates that lens or reading. It’s a film I made five years ago, when I was in a very different place than I am now, so revisiting it in a context that centers my current positionality has opened up a kind of diaristic reflection for me. 

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art making?

KS: I’m remarkably privileged in that I am healthy and have secure housing, a few months of employment, and the ability to stay home and wait this out. Honestly, the first week I spent a lot of time furiously animating to keep myself really busy, but as the weeks have gone by I’ve taken a step back and focused on slowing myself down. I’ve mostly been journaling more, playing guitar and making music. 

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

KS: A few things: Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud. Katie Crutchfield and Marlee Grace performing together on instagram live, especially in the first week of social distancing. Watching mutual aid at work. 

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You can watch Karly Stark’s the problem is that everything is fleeting (2015) here. For more from McEvoy Arts at Home, click here.

Karly Stark is an experimental filmmaker, educator, and curator based in Oakland, California. Their creative work focuses on experimental modes of cinema that explore human experience and memory through a queer lens.

Guest curator and San Francisco Cinematheque director Steve Polta speaks each Wednesday with artists in the Screening Room exhibition certainty is becoming our nemesis, which was interrupted by McEvoy Arts’ temporary closure due to the coronavirus. The program is now available to view online in its entirety.

Steve Polta: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your current artistic concerns or projects? Where are you answering this Q&A from?

Pere Ginard: I am an illustrator and filmmaker based in Barcelona (Spain), which is where I am confined while answering these questions. And I think I can describe myself much better by listing my three eternal artistic references: filmmakers Jan Svankmajer and Stan Brakhage, and author/illustrator Edward Gorey. Even COVID-19 has not changed that.

SP: How does your film in this program relate to your ongoing practice or body of work?

PG: It’s an important film in my career. I usually get a lot of inspiration from literature when making a film and I like to make versions of novels or stories, reinterpretations, etc., but in this one, I went a little further: I directly vampirized a silent film and slowed it down and imagined very slow-motion metamorphosis would be like…like the digestion of a snake. And then there is sound design: this is one of the first films in which I begin to take the narrative potential of sound very seriously, so much so that in this film, sound is often more present than image. 

Subjects such as transformation, reinvention, uncertainty, doubles (and by extension the sinister and the weird), are subjects that undoubtedly are part of my interests and obsessions…

Pere Ginard

SP: As you know, certainty is becoming our nemesis is inspired by McEvoy Arts’ exhibition Orlando, itself inspired by Virginia’s Woolf’s 1928 novel and Sally Potter’s 1992 film adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. What, if any, is your prior relationship to the work of these artists?

PG: I read Virginia Woolf’s novel many years ago, and for me it is her most interesting work (I will never forget how she narrates the transition from the 18th to the 19th century). I saw the Sally Potter film much later and I must admit that I remembered very little: I took advantage of being part of this project to review the film. 

SP: The program explores themes of transformation, self-invention, and gender performance and suggests that ambiguity of identity can operate as an emotional survival strategy and act of defiance. Are these themes something you consider in your artistic process or as central to your work exhibited here?

PG: Subjects such as transformation, reinvention, uncertainty, doubles (and by extension the sinister and the weird), are subjects that undoubtedly are part of my interests and obsessions, but always from a much more phantasmagorical point of view. Let’s say that my approach to all these themes is much more poetic than social.

SP: In what way has your inclusion in this program (or in conjunction with the larger Orlando exhibition) impacted your view of the work itself?

PG: Within the context of the program and the exhibition, suddenly my film seems to me much more linked to a current social issue than ever. It is strange and at the same time nice to see how the perception changes.

SP: How are you coping with the current public health crisis? How has it impacted your approach to art making?

PG: After the first days of confusion and daze, I have become accustomed to a new routine—much calmer, quieter, and more intimate—that I am really enjoying. The projects that come out, even without intending to, reflect this reflective state and focus on the small: series of tiny drawings, small animations of microscopic beings. I suppose that, unconsciously, this recent work is influenced by the constant medical news that we are all consuming these months.

SP: Lastly, what’s the last piece of art, media, or culture that exerted a profound impact on you?

PG: David Toop’s essays, and especially his book Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener (2010). His reflections on music, sound and literature are fascinating. Packed with cultural references of all kinds, Toop’s essays contain a thousand books in one.

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You can watch Pere Ginard’s Métamorphoses du Papillon, (2013) here. For more from McEvoy Arts at Home, click here.

Pere Ginard is an illustrator, filmmaker and alchemist. He was the co-founder and member of the multi-disciplinary studio Laboratorium for over ten years. His specialty lies in experiments with perpetual motion and variations on Lumière’s prototype.