Kathy High

Kathy High is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker who has been making films since the 1970’s. Her work primarily focuses on the intersections between humanity and science. She often collaborates with scientists to explore themes of living systems, human identity, nature, empathy, and biotechnology. Her work focuses on exploring those ideas through the dual perspectives of art and science. She focuses heavily on the cohabitation between humans, the natural world, and technology.

Her work has been showcased across the globe at dozens of museums and universities. She is a Professor in Arts and runs a lab at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. You can visit kathyhigh.com and youaremyfuture.com for more information on her past and current projects.

Alex Petersen: What concepts or terms best define you as a filmmaker?

Kathy High: I think that my work probably falls under experimental documentary. It has been that way for years. I'm really interested in trying to use the essay as a form to take an issue, a problem, a question, and kind of tease it out in the works that I do. But I would say overall, that experimental documentary would be a way to describe the works.

AP: In my class we’re looking at this idea of understanding what elements make up feminist works. On that note, would you define your work as feminist?

KH: Yeah, I do think I define my work as feminist. Sometimes I'm more upfront about it in my work. But I think even just the act of making works as a woman filmmaker is kind of a feminist act in and of itself. And then, you know, oftentimes I'll be looking at either feminist content or feminists subjects in my work.

AP: Yeah. I agree. I think any sort of work that is not the norm and made by a woman is expressing ideas and opinions that wouldn't necessarily be expressed in other works.

KH: Exactly. Yep. I agree with that.

AP: As I was looking through your work, I was interested in why you like to highlight the connections between earth and humanity. I noticed that you really put a lot of focus on very scientific things, but then kind of pull that back into base questions about humanity and the consciousness we all have. Why is that important to you?

KH: That's interesting. Yeah. I think that that's a kind of tenet that goes through the works where I may be looking at something that's particularly scientific. Like, if you think about something like Fecal Matters, which is a film about fecal microbiota transplantation, that's pretty specific. But, at the same time, the whole thrust of that project was to try and get people to start thinking about the work we do with microbes. Particularly our gut microbial communities and what they do for us. And so this is sort of digesting it back to a more humanitarian question around how we think of ourselves and our own identity.

It’s a new realism, a somewhat new realization that we contain multitudes of cells- bacteria, yeast and viruses as well as our own human cells. I think that those kinds of questions are the things that artists can bring to discussions about science. I don't think artists should feel in service to science, meaning that they should be science communicators, necessarily. I think some people do that and it's a great job. But one of the things that I'm most keenly interested in is figuring out ways that we can begin to open up the science for people to have a better sense of it, question it, and begin to work with it themselves. In a way, it’s just about really enabling people to wrap their hands and heads around these new technologies that we have available to us. To examine what these science technologies can afford us or not, and what we should be looking out for. I think that's one of the things that brings this work back to humanity.

AP: I kind of picked that up when I watched Fecal Matters as well. I like the idea of having multiple processes going on in your body, in saying that it's not just your body, it's also a host for other things. I think that is really interesting. Why did you decide to become a filmmaker as well as a scientist?

KH: Well, I'm not a scientist even though I'm really interested in science. So, maybe the question is more, why am I working with science?

AP: Yes, yes.

KH: I have been working with the medical system for a very long time. Some of the earlier works of mine, I Need Your Full Cooperation, which was one of my first films in the late eighties, and then I made Underexposed: Temple of the Fetus, which was about new reproductive technologies and looked at the medical system in relation to women's bodies. I had an eye on how people are treated as patients, particularly women. And then as there was more interest in this field of bio art, the contemporary art practice that came about in the nineties, I became interested in participating in more of a forefront working with science rather than just critiquing the medical system.

So that's when I began to kind of embed myself in laboratories and to learn different laboratory practices. I began to ask questions to learn more about those materials - those living materials that I was beginning to work with. So, I became interested in that, because I sort of - from being a filmmaker for a number of years - missed the materiality of objects. I think that that was one of the things that attracted me to being able to work with living systems. That's how I began to start shifting between filmmaking and science and being able to sort of dovetail using both of those practices in the work. Now the work also includes sculpture and installation, photographs and performance, and other things too.

AP: The reason I was just so interested in your work is because a lot of my fellow film students did not do science, but I started science and went to film. They've done film their whole lives and that's perfectly fine, but it's just such a different perspective. I didn't start to define myself as an artist until very recently. And I suppose I'm just wondering how has film allowed you to make different connections or has given you different opportunities in scientific research that you wouldn't have been able to make without being a filmmaker and artist?

KH: That's a really good question. I mean, I think one of the things that being an artist and then a filmmaker on top of it is that it allows you to kind of - I'm going to call it shapeshift - where you can walk into a situation like a lab and say, “Hey, I don't know anything here.” This is literally how I became a resident in one of my labs that I work with. I just asked the scientist if I could become embedded in his lab. And he was like, “I've never had an artist in here.” But, he's like, “Yeah, let's try it.” He was game, which was great, but also it allowed me to walk in and just say, “I don't know anything about what you guys are doing.” All I knew is that they were working with the gut microbiome.

I could just say, “Tell me about your research.” Then I could ask really naive questions without feeling stupid. I could just say, “I don't know what you're talking about. Can you explain that to me please?” I could ask them three different ways, ‘cause I'm not a scientist - “you have to explain it better to me,” you know? And so I think that that allowed me to have different kinds of conversations with people. The scientists I was working with noted that when I was in the lab, we had these kind of macro micro conversations with scientists who are often forced to look very closely at one element of one transition between whatever they're working with, and it's out of necessity and probably because of the grant funding that they have to follow that track for a while. But I think artists can come in and sort of burst open questions and ask, “Well, what does that mean for this?”

The other colleagues I was working with in the lab always appreciated these kinds of conversations, which are almost more philosophical about the nature of their work. And they appreciated that somebody else could look at their work and bring that kind of a bigger picture to what they're doing as well as an appreciation of it. I think that's one of the things that being an artist does for you. The other thing in being a filmmaker is that, especially if you're doing any kind of documentation work, people really appreciate the fact that you're taking the time to talk to them about their processes and their research and observe it. And I think there's something people really underestimate about the amount of time and commitment it takes to make a film.

AP: Yeah. People who aren't filmmakers.

KH: I've never met a non-filmmaker who got it. It's a huge amount of work, a huge amount of work. I think people don't get it, but they do appreciate it. I mean, they certainly appreciate the end results. All of the scientists in that film Fecal Matters, for example, are really appreciative of it even though it took me forever.

AP: Yeah, it can be difficult because film looks so seamless. At the final stage it looks like it didn't take any effort at all.

KH: I mean, I think those are part of the reasons that I think filmmaking is a really great entry tool to be able to engage with communities, with individuals, and to teach. The more voices, as we know, like how many women directors are there out there? Not that many. We should all be continuing to teach and encourage a whole variety of people to be making films. What we need is multiple voices.

AP: Absolutely. I’m interested in this concept, this idea of artist scientist. This concept is really fascinating. Could you delve more into that idea?

KH: I think it's a relatively newish thing that's coming on. I think it's gaining some momentum. It may be a fad, it may go away, so we should just take advantage of it while it's there. I have an appointment, for example, at my university in the arts department and the humanities school, But then I also have a laboratory in the biotech building and I'm part of the faculty at the biotech center. I feel a little bit like a mascot. So, I do literally have these two hats. And you know, it's very interesting because I'm definitely not a scientist, but I have a lot of scientists who I work with.

You know, I think that they can see that I'm serious. One of the things that I'm most keenly interested in is this kind of interdisciplinary dialogue. I think that that's where the most interesting team-building and problem solving comes from. I'm not trying to speak like an engineer. I don't always believe in the fixit mentality. I do think that an artist brings a different set of skills and questions to the table than a scientist does, than an engineer does, than a designer does, than the science technology studies person does. It’s all of these different voices. If you start piling in the interdisciplinary grouping, then it begins to become a very rich conversation.

So, I think that in a way it's like we're returning to something that we knew long ago. Before there became disciplinary silos, which happened in the 1880/70s, there were these kinds of groups of people who got together, who had a very broad knowledge based on many, many, many issues. I think that's something that we're sort of beginning to return to. I would hope, because I think they're really locked. We're really locked into our disciplines.

AP: Yeah, I totally agree.

KH: I think the problem is that the way all of these disciplines are sort of developed in terms of their career trajectories, that people don't have much of a choice to waver one way or the other. It’s a problem I often see. For example, with untenured science faculty, they can't afford to get involved with, say, a community engaged project per se, because they need to get their papers out and raise that research fund or else. The system is really screwed up still.

AP: It definitely is. As someone who has been involved in both STEM and humanities, I know firsthand how ostracized they are at times. Thanks for your insight I’d like now to talk specifically about the first work that I watched that really pulled me in: Nos Habebit Humus: The earth will have us. I loved it and I was interested in why you decided to name it that. Specifically speaking - what was the idea behind that?

KH: The idea came up because Oliver Kellhammer [a permaculturist and artist] and I had been collaborating. We were trying to think of a title and I think he was the one who came up with the title. We talked about the fact that we both were working with this idea that ultimately we will all be reclaimed. I mean my focus was a little bit more literal. I'd be reclaimed by the earth. But when he did his tour of South Troy [an area just outside of New York where Nos Habebit Humus: The earth will have us was filmed] and its ruderal ecology - everything kind of goes back to the reclamation within years. So the title seemed like a kind of big container for these different ideas we were talking about.

AP: That’s really interesting. I love how your two ideologies met. My next question kind of goes into this idea of that film. This kind of regrowth from areas where you're not supposed to grow. Was that something that you discovered when you went out to film or was it something that you knew about and planned beforehand?

KH: Yeah, that's a great question. We actually did know about it beforehand, but not necessarily where we were in this one part of the city. Oliver is a permaculturalist. He's also an artist and he's been working for 30 plus years in the field of permaculture. He's very aware of the kind of resilience that plants have to be able to handle toxic situations. He had been in different locations around Troy and had been able to collaborate with me on different projects at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, which is a nonprofit organization that I work with (mediasanctuary.org). Oliver had done workshops with us and it was all around this notion of plants being able to reclaim industrial wasteland. And so we decided that we would start this kind of ongoing project.

But with this film, we decided to visit this one area of South Troy which I knew was, you know, kind of a wreck. It was kind of abandoned and overgrown - that sort of thing. And so, we went there, but neither of us had been to that particular location before we started filming it. And so, all of the discoveries that we made while we were filming were in actual real time and we didn't know what we would find or not find.

But he said, “Oh look, I'm looking for some locust tree seeds and here they are,” you know, like that. They were actually completely fortuitous and just happened to be there. And so, he was able to walk through the plants that were growing out of the buildings, these different hotspots, the insects, dead animals, etc. And I think it worked really well because of that kind of discovery and surprise Oliver has, which is sort of - he's a little bit childlike and his lovely reactions to things like, “Oh wow, look at this!” This was a pretty polluted area, so he was delighted to find such growth, biodiversity and even overgrowth - it was kind of miraculous. It was great to have that live on camera.

AP: Yeah, I picked up on that. I've definitely had that feeling. I didn't switch to film because I don't like science. I switched to film because I felt like I could do more in film than I could as a scientist. So, I definitely understand that reaction. And I remember just having the same moments where we would discover something, and it would just be so amazing. The smallest things are so important.

KH: Right, that's cool. It sounds like you can really apply a lot of what you know from that to so many things.

AP: Thank you! I hope so too. Jumping back to Fecal Matters, what was the process involved in making that film?

KH: Well, I did that in collaboration with Guy Schaffer who, at the time, was finishing his PhD as a science technology studies student at RPI. We just became good friends and realized that we had a common interest in this area of waste, and neither of us knew as much as we wanted to know about it. So, we decided we would just start interviewing people. We reached out to people in New York, starting first at Mount Sinai, which was a really well-known hospital that deals with inflammatory bowel disease issues in New York City. It kind of is one of the top in the field.

The first person we contacted very graciously said, “Yeah, I'll do it,”, and then he put us in touch with the other gastroenterologist who was in the ER there. And then we also got in touch with the people at OpenBiome. - a non-profit stool bank. Which was kind of amazing because when we first started filming with them, it was when they were really young as an institution and they were all still kind of giddy about what they were doing. I mean, since then they've grown exponentially. We actually went back and filmed them again later on and their facility had quadrupled in size. They had moved somewhere else and it was just completely different. We actually kept the original footage that we had because they changed so much, but they're engaged in the same vision basically, which is amazing. And now they're going on to all kinds of other microbiological research. It's just incredible what they do.

Then finally, Guy had got in contact with Dr. Emma Allen-Vercoe, a professor at Guelph University. We decided to take a trip up there to interview her because of her work with synthetic gut material. She was kind of deconstructing and reconstructing these microbiome bacteria to build different kinds of synthetic gut material. I think that's really where the future of it is going,. I mean obviously, this documentary could have gone on for years, but I thought that gave an overview of sort of the state of where things are right now. It also gave us the kind of complications that the field has at a point in time.

AP: That's super exciting. I enjoyed watching that one just because there's a lot of jargon in it, but it has so many interesting ideas behind it. They’re such simple concepts behind it that anybody can understand regardless if you're a scientist or an artist.

KH: Right, right. Exactly. I think the other thing is that, you know, in that case particularly, I worked with humor quite a bit to try and diffuse some of that intimidation of exactly what you're talking about and also the fact that we're talking about shit.

AP: Yeah, why not make it funny! No, I definitely agree. Okay, my final, closing question is about the process of your artistic evolution. What do you want to move on to next or focus on next? Not necessarily projects, but just ideas or concepts to explore.

KH: I mean, it's hard to answer that question because there's so many different ideas out there. I was showing my work to a bunch of scientists the other day. It was supposed to be a group of artists and scientists, but there were very few artists in the room. And I was sort of amazed that was happening, you know, because my work is really kind of odd. But they were hanging in there and they asked good questions and were actually really engaged in it. And so I want to be able to kind of continue to engage with that.

But on the other hand, I do want to get back into stuff that uses science somewhat. However, I mostly want to leave a little bit of straight documentary stuff behind and get back into more performative work and see where that goes. I sort of always flip flopped between these modes and, I think I feel the urge to kind of go the other direction for a little while and see what happens and then come back. The main thing I'm interested in is just being able to have the work effectively reach out to a bunch of people in whatever means possible.

The next piece I'm thinking of is really dark and I'm trying to figure out how to make it not so dark, ‘cause we're in a dark time anyway, but sort of dark with hope or dark with courage, sort of looking at what our futures could be. I'm very interested in science fiction at this point. And so I'm very interested in speculative fiction and interested in moving my own work into more and more of that area for a while and seeing where it takes me.

AP: That’s super cool, I wish you success! I really want to thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me over the phone. It really means a lot to me not just for the class, but because I am genuinely interested in your work and I think that the perspectives of science and art intertwining is something that I'm just so intimately familiar with.

KH: The thing is - if you're going to become a filmmaker, you're always going to be learning something.

AP: Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. I'm always - my brain's always going on to the next thing.

KH: Yeah, you're never going to be bored.

My name is Alex Petersen and I am currently a senior undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am a Film and Digital media student, but before I became an artist I was an Environmental Studies Biology student. I am very familiar with how each discipline perceives the world differently - a concept that is highly expressed in Kathy’s works. By engaging in this interview with Kathy, I was given a fantastic chance to speak with someone who is also familiar with the divergence and convergence of art and science. This interview was conducted by phone from Santa Cruz to New York in February 2020.