Early Work & Origins - Part 3/6
TRANSCRIPTION: When I was in college, I did a documentary on girls' colleges, where I just - very traditional documentary, 35mm and some video, of girls at Wellesley, Smith, and Mount Holyoke, sort of just living their college day, day-to-day, day in and out. And I got to graduate school and people were like, "Well, that's fantastic that you did that project, but where are you in all this?" So I said, "All right. I'll make some videos where I am in front on the camera. Let's go." So part of it was a challenge, and part of it was... I was interested in these people I would see on the street and I thought, "What happens if I go home with this person. What happens if I ask them to take part in my life and create these narratives with them out of childhood play/pretend games. Or just sort of things they would never think of doing." So it was kind of an experiment at the beginning, and it just kind of got rolling. A lot of times I just want to see how this would look. Like, I would love to see how it would look to tie fifty balloons onto my body and go out into public and see what happens. You know, very much performance art-based, but with huge elements of documentary. Because the unknown is always more interesting than anything we can possibly plan. So I think these projects, they start with an idea and they build on that idea.