Monday a.m. Artist Post 9/28

Miranda July works include video, performances, web-based projects, and writing and directing plays. Miranda July was born on February 15, 1974 in Barre, Vermont as Miranda Jennifer Grossinger. She now works under the name Miranda July. As a young child, she moved to Berkley, California where she would grow up and start her visual and performing arts career. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Biennale, Cannes Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival to name a few. She currently has an interactive sculpture at the Venice Biennale titled “Eleven Heavy Things”.
Miranda July has made several films and done her fair share of performances starting with her collaborative performances in the early 90’s with music groups like Sleater-Kinney, Chicks on Speed, and Dub Narcotic. Other performances she is known for is one titled “The Swan Tool” from 2000-2002. This performance consisted of video, performance, live music, and helium. It is about a woman who cannot decide whether she should live or if she should die. While performing this on a narrow catwalk between two screens, she created an illusion for her audience that she was digging a hole in her backyard to bury herself in. Another one of her interactive works that I have found to be a strong one is titled “The Hallway” and was commissioned by the Yokohama Triennial in 2008. This project was made up of a 125-foot hallway and it was lined with 50 wooden signs with text inscribed. “The text acts as an internal voice saying, ‘It’s too late to go back now but the end seems far away’” as the viewer walks down the hallway that serves as a metaphor for the paths of life that we travel down. “And like life, the hall is filled with indecision, disappointment, boredom, and joy- and it does end”. I enjoy this piece a lot because the viewers can all have different experiences with this piece, according to how fast they read, how fast they walk, how patient they are, and if boredom sets in on them while they are walking down this extremely long hallway.
Her film “Me You and Everyone We Know” is July’s first feature length film and has gotten a good amount of positive feedback. Created in 2005, her first feature length film won a jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. From an excerpt about July’s film on her website states that “In July’s modern world, the mundane is transcendent and every day people become radiant characters who speak their innermost thoughts, act on secret impulses and experience truthful human moments that at times approach the surreal. They seek togetherness and through tortured routes and find redemption in small moments that connect them to someone else on Earth.”

Artist Website
Article on July
July's Web Project Website