Jamie Marie Waelchli
US artist
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Interview:10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
I was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, in the USA. I have a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2003, and a Master of Fine Arts from Washington State University in 2007.

2. When, how and why started you filming?
I took an introduction to digital video course in the summer of 2005 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The department had a small library of work, like Tony Oursler’s “The Loner”. There was also a little dark room the size of a closet for a student to watch the videos. So I spent the summer before I started graduate school getting all inspired by doing that.

3. What kind of subjects have your films?
Usually they are the things I find myself thinking about, and I want to say something, or show something about.

4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
I try to keep my concepts and execution as clean and simple as possible. A lot of my work is based in performance art.

5. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
I used to use equipment and lights from my school when I was a student. I’m not anymore, so I recently bought a Nikon D500 to use for photographs and short video projects.

6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general
and you personally?
The challenge for me, and (I think) for so many artists is that there is so much digital media out there screaming for attention, you have to fight for an audience sometimes.

7. How do you finance your films?
So far my projects have been on such a low tech, small scale that I can cover it out of pocket. It’s definitely harder to do that when you’re not a student anymore, and you have so much less equipment at your disposal.

8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?

Most of my serious video projects are just me. There are times when I have collaborated, and those projects have been more playful. I’ve got wonderful memories of those.

9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
Tehching Hsieh’s “Time Piece” and Marit Følstad’s “Blow Up” are two performance pieces that stay with me. I’ve also been inspired by the recent performance pieces by Ma Qiusha, and I look up to the work of director Kelly Reichardt.

10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
One goal is to become more technically proficient with the craft of shooting and editing video. But the main goal is to express myself and to be understood by others.