| My exhibition strategies often engage an audience comprised of a very general public that is not necessarily expecting art or gathered in established arts venues. I interrupt the daily flow of public exchange, inviting strangers into momentary relationships. I create websites that infiltrate and participate in online fan culture, offer non-professional advice to passersby from storefronts, and find reasons to enter into the homes of strangers. I am very interested in teetering on the edge between humor and pathos. I have fun making the work, because it appeals to my sense of absurdity. My work in video, web art and public intervention is often per-formative and relational. My presence in the work is not autobiographical. |  |
Jillian McDonald
My exhibition strategies often engage an audience comprised of a very general public that is not necessarily expecting art or gathered in established arts venues. I interrupt the daily flow of public exchange, inviting strangers into momentary relationships. I create websites that infiltrate and participate in online fan culture, offer non-professional advice to passersby from storefronts, and find reasons to enter into the homes of strangers. I am very interested in teetering on the edge between humor and pathos. I have fun making the work, because it appeals to my sense of absurdity.
My work in video, web art and public intervention is often per-formative and relational. My presence in the work is not autobiographical. I think it’s clear that my image serves as a deliberate subject who enacts shared fantasies or fears. My work often starts with an open question. For example, how do people genuinely fall in love with or stalk celebrities, or why do horror fans seek entertainment in extremely abject and fearful scenarios? My research involves watching an enormous amount of films, and the artwork that results is at play in the very territory I am interrogating. I rapidly lose interest in answering the question at hand, because I no longer have to answer it for myself.
Some of my work online is beginning to draw lines between digital and performative interactivity—“Snow Stories,” a story engine where visitor’s written stories about snowy experiences are translated into visual stories drawn from a massive database of film clips featuring snow-covered landscapes suggestive of the trappings of these scenarios—stark, quiet, fearsome. “Snow Stories” is inspired by my childhood in Winnipeg, where the harsh winter surroundings are at once stunningly beautiful and potentially deadly.
In “Advice Lounge,” a networked performance that has a live component, I offer free advice to web visitors and passersby via computers, webcams, a custom chat application, and an online lounge interface.
Although this work parodies a public service, the impetus is sincere, as are the interactions. The role I play as advisor takes cues from the attitude of the participants themselves. The work is often an excuse to communicate with strangers, who are some of my favorite people. Part of what I enjoy about performing in public spaces is the lack of control I have in a situation, even when I set up the situation myself.
Frequently I become personally implicated in the question. Sometimes I don’t even realize this process is operating until later. In recent work, I digitally manipulated romantic scenes from Hollywood films, creating a soft critique of celebrity obsession. While working on “Me and Billy Bob,” an ongoing body of work that implies an imaginary relationship between myself and Hollywood actor Billy Bob Thornton, I actually developed a crush on him. I was taken by surprise, despite the fact that I unintentionally set up my own quandary.
Crushes often befall a subject where the gaze and voice of the object of love work on a subconscious level to infiltrate the subject and perpetuate desire.
In 2005 I made a video called Screen Kiss, digitally inserting myself into embraces with a number of popular actors who shared similar physical features. My friends likened this work to me developing a boyfriend “type” and screening candidates. I was single when I started, and by the time I finished I had a boyfriend who apparently resembles a lot of those actors, and Billy Bob himself.
More recently, an investigation of the horror genre has transformed me into an unsuspecting fan of horror, consuming rabidly the classics as well as contemporary horror. This intrigues me because my squeamishness, feeding nightmares and taboos, was an obstacle to such thrills in the past.
