Seth Price Interview November 2020

Interview

Seth Price interviewed by Barbara Clausen and Kristin Poor, November 19, 2020

Seth Price is a New York-based multidisciplinary contemporary artist and writer, as well as a former staff member of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). This interview discusses Price’s experience working with Jonas at EAI, focusing particularly on her piece Mirage II. 

Transcript

• “Seth Price interviewed by Barbara Clausen and Kristin Poor, November 19, 2020 (Interview Transcript).” Joan Jonas Knowledge Base, Artist Archives Initiative, 2021.

Abstract

The interview begins with Price recalling his first meeting with Jonas while he was working at Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) in the late 1990s, when Jonas came in to have her tapes edited [00:00–02:52]. Price speaks about his experience working with Jonas on Mirage II: the project started with Jonas bringing in boxes of old video tape reels for EAI to oversee their conservation, cleaning, and remastering. Price describes watching these videos with Jonas and what the conversation between the two would be like [03:03–11:49]. Early in the process, Price began to get a sense of what footage Jonas was and was not interested in. He would characterize footage with indistinct meaning as something Jonas would be interested in, so he was surprised when she was drawn to clips of news footage that she had [11:51–14:11]. The interview then shifts to technical aspects of Mirage. Price recalls whether or not Jonas had a sense during the editing process of how she was going to use footage as a single channel or as a projection, and how something might be shown within the space of the installation. Price also touches on Jonas living and working with her archive in one space and how that might have changed the thematic layers of and relationships between her works [14:12–18:51]. 

Circling back to EAI, Price speaks about Jonas’s relationship with the organization and his other experiences with her there, like the film screening on the Dia rooftop in 2000 [18:53–23:07]. This turns into a conversation about Jonas’s ability to quickly improvise and her openness to suggestions and organic collaboration [23:10–26:48]. Price also touches on the late nineties and early 2000s as a pivotal moment for technology, when he began using Final Cut Pro. He mentions that Jonas began using the program in 2002 when she was commissioned by Documenta [26:49–29:56]. Price describes how working with Jonas has influenced his own work as an artist, particularly his consciousness of her model of fluidity. He takes a moment to speak about his works Digital Video Effect: “Spills” (2004) and Digital Video Effect: “Holes” (2003) [29:58–36:03]. The interview ends with Price giving advice to curators, conservators, and technicians who might set up Jonas’s exhibitions and installations in the future. He specifically focuses on interpretive authority around her videos and how they should be presented, gesturing to the example of MoMA’s installation of Mirage [36:03–43:46].