Andres Jurado
Colombian videomaker
Interview:10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I studied art & visual design, then new media arts, and then a Magister in Critics and another MBA in Visual Arts, I teach arts at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. So, it seems that I like to study and teach lot.
Laura studied at RISD, She’s a printmaker but She’s going through contemporary art.
2. When, how and why started you filming?
I don’t remember well, but I think I was 14 years old, so I didn’t had a camera but I was posing and acting like I had one and recording in my mind, so I think that was an starting.
3. What kind of subjects have your films?
Many different, but mostly animals, counting humans also.
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
More than principles I follow some instincts, but my formation was the Avant-garde video artists and experimental cinema directors, so I feel the influence.
5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
I try to use special but not expensive equipment, like high speed video for example, but with low image quality, that means my interests is not only in the HD image quality but in the high experience of movement and behaviour. If I find something that can allow me to make experiments in that way I think I would choose that kind of equipment
6. The field of “art and moving images†(one may call it videoart or also differently) it is manifesting itself as an important position in contemporary art. Tell me more about your personal position and how you see the future of this field (your personal future and the future of “art and moving imagesâ€)
It was an avant-garde movement at first, but now is like something you have to do if you’re a contemporary artist. If you see, now most of the contemporary artists at least have one video production, so the pioneers won a battle in making the institutions legitimate the video art practices as “Artâ€, but there still more struggles, using video or moving images to activate different processes still have his charm. We have to displace it to something more interesting, also if you’re from a southern colonized country, how can we put video in a place that corresponds to your reality?
7. How do you finance your films?
We don’t had for many years a sophisticated cultural structure, and we still have many problems, so you have to produce with everything is at hand, mostly you have some job and put your money in your productions. But there are some people who spend a lot of money in some classic productions. I’m not one of those.
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
You cannot work as an individual, the cameras and the equipment was made by others, also the knowledge, so individual doesn’t mean too much, the work is not complete anyway, someone is watching it and it’s working. But I know, I prefer not to be thinking about that, if someone wants to be part or help with making the things you want to make I think it’s more confortable. The difference I see is that many people don’t care about what you do, that’s the ugly part because that can make you feel the same, and that’s not the point.
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
We have many influences, mine are all my culture and all my life, I like so much works of David Larcher and works from videoart pioneers, but I think I have also influences from my students.
10. What are your plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
My plans are more clear than my dreams, but my dreams sometimes stay in front of the plans, so I let they fight each other and let me keep on working on art projects and films, actually my research topics are; animal-human dichotomy, animals in contemporary art, post-colonial processes and avant-garde ethics.