Janet Biggs is known for her work in video, photography and performance where she captures epic events and condenses them into studies in the movement and form of physical skill. Her subjects are diverse: speeding motorcycles on the Bonneville Salt Flats, horses galloping on treadmills at Cornell University’s veterinary school, Olympic synchronized swimmers in their attempts to defy gravity, and icebergs floating in Iceland’s Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon.

You can see Biggs’ work at this year’s Sidewalk Film Festival September 24-26, 2010 in Birmingham, Alabama where, for the first time,  the cinematic festival will host video artists along with traditional filmmakers.

Interview with Janet Biggs – Part One

Fauxrator had a chance to speak with Biggs about her work and find out a little about where she’s coming from, where she’s going, and to get a feel for what visitors to Sidewalk Film Festival 2010 can hope to see.

Fauxrator: Nobody Rides For Free was a great opening at Conner Contemporary Art. But apparently with you, Janet, there is no rest for the weary! Tell me about your latest project and where it took you this week?

Biggs: Since my last project took me to the High Arctic it only seems fitting my current project has taken me to NASCAR! I just spent the last week in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the Charlotte Motor Speedway filming fast cars, smoking burnouts, and perfect pit crew choreography while dodging lug nuts that flew like bullets.

I have an upcoming exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte. The exhibition will open in their new building on November 5th, 2010 and will focus on my recent single-channel videos (including both Vanishing Point and Fade to White that are in my show at Conner Contemporary Art. The Mint Museum commissioned me to make a new piece for this show and I couldn’t think of a more fitting and challenging subject to explore than NASCAR, which is headquartered in Charlotte.

Fauxrator: NASCAR is a sport that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a kid, but my art-world friends don’t necessarily understand the appeal beyond the South. What do you think art fans will get from your newest work, and just as important, what will NASCAR fans get from seeing contemporary art video?

Biggs: I’ve really just began this piece so it’s a bit hard to talk about.  As with much of my work, the piece evolves from my initial interest in a subject.  Through my immersion in a world that is new for me, such as NASCAR, I am able to allow the experience of making the piece shape the content as well as the visuals.  I am not interested in making a work that confirms preconceived notions from either the art world or the world of NASCAR.  I think that there is a way to make both audiences experience the sport in a new way.  I think a piece truly succeeds when I can share authorship with a wide range of people.  Depending on an individuals personal experiences, they view a piece with a unique eye and ultimately construct new meaning.

All that being said, I’m obsessed with the pit crews!  Speed, grace, and beauty … as well as obsession, muscle, risk as the cars scream in and out of their control.

Fauxrator: The art of athletic skill and competition are usually on display in your videos. This common thread seems to be a trademark – where do you think this comes from and do you, yourself, “train” to prepare for each specific work?

Biggs: I am fascinated by individuals who have the intense focus, drive, and obsession to dedicate themselves to a single pursuit.  I am especially interested in athletes who strip away everything but the desire to be the very best at their chosen sport.  Up until my current project with NASCAR, most of the athletes I’ve worked with have been successful in their fields but their success does not garner wide public attention, corporate sponsorship, or large financial rewards.  Their focus is the pursuit of perfection in an intense and person way.  I’m interested to see how or if NASCAR’s wide audience appeal and major corporate sponsorship will affect my decision-making process in the current piece.

I don’t really “train” for my projects, although I did get in better shape for my trip to film in the Arctic as I wanted to be up to the physical demands the region would present.  More often, I find myself needing to learn new skills.  I now have a pretty decent egg beater kick from all my time filming synchronized swimmers underwater (I was even recruited by one of the synchronized teams after filming them).

I hadn’t done much preparation for filming the motorcycle land speed trials on Utah’s salt flats but still found myself buckled into a race car seat that was hanging off the trailer hitch of a pickup truck going over 100 miles per hour.

I knew I wanted to choreograph and film kayaks in the Arctic, but I had never been in a kayak.  So I spent a couple months taking kayak lessons in the Hudson River and eventually joined the NYC Kayak Polo team to hone my skills.  While kayak polo is a full-on contact sport and definitely gave me the confidence to don a drysuit and skirt-in to a kayak in the Arctic (where calving glaciers can bury you, a walrus can split kayaks in two, and more than 10 minutes in the water means hypothermia and death) I can’t say I enjoyed my time hanging upside down in the Hudson ingesting the run off water from New York City’s streets.

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