Jeanne Finley

CZ: First of all, can you tell me the start of your career? What make you choose this path?

JF:I didn't always make films, but I was always writing and photographing at a pretty young age. By putting those two things together: that's what I still do. As I began putting photographs and writing together, it began to make more sense to do film, rather than working with still photographs.

CZ:Okay, so when you started, did you ever received any objections from your family or friends since this is a rather risky career?

JF: No, my mother pretty much let me do whatever I wanted in terms of career.

CZ: From the start of your career, have you ever experienced discrimination or people's disbelief in your ability as a female artist?

JF: I'm sure that it has played a role. But I don't feel that there was ever a majorly egregious situation. I think that it's a more a kind of constant pressure that one field especially someone of my age,I think that when I started working with video, it was still a really young medium, and there weren't a ton of people working in this area in the early 80s. I think that the people who had been working in video, starting in the 70s, were women and they were attracted to video production. I think there were a lot female artist who did, video because video waw sort of new and raw media. It didn't have a lot of trappings compared to more traditional media. These video weren't expected to have high level of skill and expertise. One could truly experiment,because everything was an experiment when comes to video. There was nothing that had been done before - and I do think that I was attracted to that freedom of this area like a lot of women were.

CZ: Do people ever criticize you for your work? Especially when it is experimental?

JF: Oh, yeah, you know, I think everybody's work gets criticized every now and then for sure. But again, the medium I was working in was experimental by nature. So that was that; Like, if you were working in video, you were experimenting, you know. I mean, that was just what it was. So, I think that whatever criticism came my way was less about the fact that I was working in an experimental media and more about people maybe didn't like the way I was experimenting.

How do you take that criticism?

does that affect your following projects.

JF: I can’t say I am impervious to criticism. But in the end, you just do what you do. There’s a difference between criticisms. A lot of people will give you really great feedback and critique your work and that’s part the process. For film and video especially anything you work on for so long - you really need to step back and have someone else to look at your work and give you criticism. That’s just the nature of our work, and luckily critics mostly liked my work, I guess. So I didn’t suffer a lot from terrible reviews. I certainly got one or two along the way, but I think I love having my work criticized in the process and I can learn something from it.

CZ: Let’s talk about your projects.

Start from Involuntary Conversion. Your film back in 1991. That film persuaded me to interview you. I see a lot of political messages in this one about military nuclear weapons and human invasion on nature. Can you tell me more about this film?

JF: Well, it is interesting that there is an article that I’ve co-written that deals with that film and my recent film Book Report that also deals with language. The way language is being manipulated and how people utilize language. They often obscure rather than clarify. And that’s really what the “involuntary conversion” is about: how language can be used by people in power to obfuscate truth or confuse truth rather than to use language as a clarifying element in descriptive or political discourse. The new project that I had finished in 2017 Book Report deals with contemporary political situations - language is being utilized in this what some people call a “post-truth” culture.

CZ:I couldn’t find your YouTube clip of “Book Report” yet.

JF: Book Report is available online yet. I could send you a link if you want.

CZ:That’s great. Thanks

So, It is surprising to me that we are still having the same conversation on a problem that is being brought up nearly 30 years ago about how language and news manipulate people.

JF: I mean language has always been used that way. That's why teaching how language is politically charged is important. But what has become a very different kind of playing field right now is the relationship of political truth - or any kind of truth - to reality,and how does that play itself out today.

And it is different today from when Involuntary Conversion was made. We are in a completely different political climate. I would say much more sinister now. Even back then - and I thought it was pretty sinister at the time. It doesn’t hold a candle to the kind of sinister utilization of language today.

CZ:Yeah, you are really one of the pioneers who discover this issue early on.

JF:Thanks, that’s nice to hear.

CZ!Let’s talk about “Falsework”. Your project in 2015 with John Muse. I assume he is your colleague.

JF:John Muse and I have collaborated on and off since 1989. We’ve worked together for many many years. Not on everything. But a lot of stuff has been done in collaboration with John.

CZ:Yeah, I saw a lot of Muse+Finley projects on your website.

Let’s talk about falsework. That film has a relatively more positive message I assume? What is the process of making that film?

JF: Falsework? It’s really about what are the motivations, and what is the importance, of cultural preservation, and there are all kinds of ways that preserving a pet cemetery could be considered completely ironic. And the piece really started with this visual disparity that we saw of this multi-tons cement and steel structure that cost millions of dollars that they've built over the pet cemetery to protect it - And the pet cemetery was fragile. It is falling apart anyway, and then you had this immense structure over it. nd our piece really begins with this look at the visual disparity between these two things.

So we began exploring why anyone would go to those lengths to protect the crumbling plot of land that was about to fall apart. I always love my pet Sarah, I used to take her to my classes or field trips, so I had real love for the location. I was also astounded by the effort that went into saving it, but the more I talked to people who live have been deeply involved in the military, and how they have no location to tie to their caps, their military family. It had a growing potency - especially for kids and a lot of my works are related to kids. For the kids who grew up in military families especially, these have the history. Because every home is borrowed and they are only occupied for a year or two. So, preservation becomes strangely important and it was just an exploration of that surprising behavior as we delved further into this matter.

CZ: Great. So what about Clockwork? Also a film you collaborated on with John Muse.

JF: Clockwork was a super fun piece to work on, and we are always interested in disparity. In this film, for all the pieces except the one of the kids’ birthday party, we documented Labor, and they were all forms of labor that require an incredible intimacy between the labor and their clients. But the discrepancy between them was like when you go to the dentist, it’s usually a big deal. But the dentist usually gets 20 people a day. There always one more person coming through. It’s a very interesting to see this kind of human relationships of touch and care between all of these people and their clients. It definitely reveals how repetitive their labor is- and how each individual that can have a unique experience. That’s the same kind of disparity between the tiny little grave pet cemetery and gigantic, multimillion-dollar structure to protect it. It was the same kind of disparity between the intimacy and ultimately just labor.

CZ:Is it hard to ask people being filmed while getting massaged?

JF: Well, we knew the place, so we asked the massager to ask her client instead. That’s how we did it with the dentist and hairstylist. They ask their clients and that’s how we got them.

CZ:Ok. One last question, and I think you already indirectly answered that is are you still an active filmmaker like you have been for so long?

JF: Oh, yeah. Very much so. I am finishing a full-length film that I am editing right now called Journey Beyond Cosmodrome. Cosmodrome is the launch pad in Kazakhstan where rockets are sent to international regions.

CZ: I am looking forward to it. And thank you for your time.

My name is Cedric Zhang and I am cinema and digital media major student from UC Davis. I am a filmmaker and have made several non-professional level short films. The following is an interview between me and artist Jeanne Finley conducted by phone on November 11, 2018 from Davis to Berkeley.