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Ann Hamilton: An Interview

Video Data Bank

2017 01:01:45 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Art Criticism, Interview, Politics, Sculpture, VDB Interviews, Visiting Artists Program

Description

In conversation with curator and educator Mary Jane Jacob, visual artist Ann Hamilton (b. 1956) talks about care, interactivity, and social relations — key concepts that preoccupy her practice — and why she feels compelled to revisit these issues under the Trump administration. Hamilton was trained in textile design and sculpture, and she received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1985. Hamilton is internationally renowned for her large-scale, immersive installations that are poetically site-specific, sensorial, and inviting. Her recent piece at the Park Avenue Armory, The Event of a Thread (2012), which is primarily discussed in the interview, is a participatory installation that uses a swings-and-curtains system to “weave” together the physical and social histories of the space.

In the interview, Hamilton also discusses her current interest in life, air, and vitality. Referencing Donna Haraway’s book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016), Hamilton evaluates her current mode of working and considers her constant negotiation with her surroundings as a latent resistance against, and an improvement of, the social and political landscape. Finally, the conversation circles back to where it begins, ending with a simple yet poignant question proposed by art critic Michael Brenson: how do we do what we care about better?

Interview conducted in 2017 by Mary Jane Jacob.

The Video Data Bank is the leading resource in the United States for videotapes by and about contemporary artists. The VDB collection features innovative video work made by artists from an aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collection includes seminal works that, seen as a whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960's and continuing to the present. Works in the collection employ innovative uses of form and technology, mixed with original visual style to address contemporary art and cultural themes.

Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement in the United States, the Video Data Bank is one of the nation's largest providers of alternative and art-based video. Through a successful national and international distribution service, the VDB distributes video art, documentaries made by artists, and recorded interviews with visual artists, photographers and critics.