Vanishing Point

Date: 2009
Length: 10:32 min.
Format:  16:9
Specification: Colour, Sound

With its title taken from Richard Sarafian's 1971 road movie, Janet Biggs' video “Vanishing Point” combines two scenarios that are very different in visual language: After a serious motorcycle accident on the Bonneville salt flats in 2007, Leslie Porterfield returned to motor sports one year later and broke three world records, one of which was a land-speed record of 234 mph. Biggs recorded footage both of the racing motorcyclist and the sporting event. Because of the snow white, smooth desert sand and the clear blue horizon of the salt flats, the eye has no reference points and the profile shots of Porterfield and her motorcycle transform the full-throttle, dangerous attempt into an apparent statical moment.
The other scene shows a song that Biggs composed, performed by the ARC gospel choir, an initiative of the Harlem’s Addicts Rehabilitation Center. In her text, Biggs deals with questions of identity and wants to know: “When are we no longer ourselves?” Isolation and self-loss, made visible by deep intrusions into our lives, represent the background that Biggs uses as the opportunity to deal with the question of how the limits of our identity are laid down and when our essence – what makes us who we are – eventually vanishes.

MW

Interview:

► 1. Your video has been chosen among over 1700 festival entries to participate in Videonale 13. How central is the video medium to your overall artistic production? Is it complimentary to other media you use or do you work exclusively with video?

I’ve been working primarily in video and video installations for the past fifteen years, but it is the concept that drives my projects, not the medium. I continue to use video because at this time it is the most concrete way to express my ideas.

I've always been interested in the immersive experience. Even when I was producing paintings and sculpture, I would combine objects and/or images to make installations. Video provided a great economy of means. I could create something phenomenological out of projected light. The immersive nature of video and video installation has been satisfying and has kept me excited about the medium.

► 2. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

I tend to choose grand stories, global crises, and heroic events as my point of departure, and then slide sideways into the small gesture or esoteric task as seen from deeply personal perspectives. I seek out people who are dedicated to the pursuit of precision and perfection, from world class athletes to Arctic explorers. I fixate on the concentration, expectation and rigor of people deep in their personal zone. I examine the details in a quest to understand self-knowledge, control, and desire. I emphasize images of repetitive or ritualized movement, creating otherworldly scenarios and landscapes as a way of acknowledging that these incidental, small moments are as wondrous as setting world records.

► 3. What artists do you relate to or find significant for your own art-making?

I am drawn to those who have the determination to define and defend their identity in all fields, not just the visual arts. My work is informed by people like Linda Norberg, a woman coal miner who is working in one of the Earth's most extreme environments. She begins her days by descending miles into the darkness beneath the frozen Arctic, excelling in one of the most inaccessible and dangerous places imaginable.

I find performance artist and counter tenor John Kelly compelling in his exceptional ability to use both his posture and face with as much fluency as his voice. He alters his appearance in a search to find meaning within the body's immutable condition.

The Addicts Rehabilitation Center Gospel Choir inspires me with their effort and open struggle to forge and sustain a sense of personal integration while fighting addiction.
Motorcycle racer Leslie Porterfield survived a devastating crash in Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 2007, only to return to competition there the following year and set a world speed record of 234 miles per hours. Her intense focus when everything is stripped away except for her desire to be the fastest in the world motivates my work.

► 4. Do you think the video medium can address social or political issues better than other art media?

While many people around the world access moving images for information, be it television or on line, I believe that it is the content and how it is framed rather than a specific medium that can best address social or political issues. The spoken word, a written passage, or compelling image all can hold the power to inform, inspire, enlighten, and alter opinion.

► 5. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Which of the two positions is close to your own art-making philosophy?

My interest is not in high drama or dazzling spectacle. My references include people who undertake extreme levels of discipline to make something difficult seem effortless. I focus on challenges presented by the unknown that are reflected in the details. Loss and change are implicit in the human condition, but loss and change can lead to transformation or transcendence.

► 6. How do you understand success in an art-making career?

There are so many models of success as an artist. I judge success by the level of dialogue that my work provokes. I am interested in a shared authorship, where the viewer's history becomes an element in the final reception of the work. By expanding my audience, the work continues to grow. I also see the ability to pursue new challenges, both physically, and conceptually as a mark of success.

► 7. What is the most difficult and the most rewarding thing about making art / being an artist?

Both my most rewarding and the most difficult moment in art making is when a project has reached a point where I feel as if the project itself, rather than me as the artist, dictates decisions about the direction taken. This is a rare and sometimes terrifying moment where control is relinquished to passion.

► 8. What are your upcoming projects?

I am continuing to explore the struggle to define and defend a sense of self in environments where assumptions about self and reality are radically altered, both through video and performance. This work will be exhibited in my mid-career survey at the Tampa Museum of Art in the fall of 2011.

► 9. What do you do when you don't make art?

I explore, research, and investigate actions and locations that I find compelling.