Zoe Beloff Questions/Response

1. Do you associate yourself with other art movements in history that explored the unconscious processes of the mind?

2. Why is film the best medium to communicate your ideas?

- - -

- What was the most interesting quote of the lecture and why?

"Albert Grass and I are one in the same."

Throughout the entire lecture I thought I was in history class! I was wondering where the art was... then at the very end I realized the entire presentation was her art, her creations. The end was definitely my favorite part of the lecture. 

- Using three words, define the core of the artist's practice and artwork.

artifice

narrative

historical

- What is the most interesting thing you learned about the artist that you did not know before?
The artist entirely fabricates the information she bases her "studies" on. The historical information is loosely based on true history, but the narratives are false.

- Do you know the answer to your two original questions? If so, what are the answers?
I don't really have an answer to the first question, although she did mention something about surrealists.

She did answer my second question which was: Why is film the best medium to communicate your ideas? She said the creates the story first, and the narrative then determines the medium. She does not choose film and then the project, it's always the other way around. Each project she described has a slightly different reason as to why it was filmed. The first project about the disturbed mental patients were based on (fabricated) series of photos and manuscripts documenting their states that she felt were just shy of sound movies.

- What image or artwork do you find the most compelling and powerful after hearing the artist describe it?
The Coney Island Dreamland and Amateur Psychoanalytical Society is the most fascinating now that I know all of it is fiction. All of the plans and comics she presented as being done by other characters in history all seemed so real, and extremely elaborate.

- Do you have any new questions in regards to the artist?

Are you truly schizophrenic, like the mental patients you've dreamed up?