What Makes Us Human: Leah Oates Interviews Pierre St-Jacques

“I became an artist by surprise; I almost slipped unknowingly into it.”

Pierre St-Jacques, Yes, 2009-2011, 6:50 minutes, HD, Color, 16.9 widescreen, Stereo.

What Makes Us Human: Leah Oates Interviews Pierre St-Jacques

Leah Oates: How did you become an artist?

Pierre St-Jacques: I became an artist by surprise; I almost slipped unknowingly into it. I grew up in a family and in an environment that did not come into contact with contemporary visual arts. I knew about famous sculptures and paintings and loved them, but these were centuries old and it did not come to mind that one could do that type of thing in the present. My background, mainly because of its financial situation, was resolutely practical. The fact that I liked to draw, and I drew every day for hours, pointed me more towards the design field. After high school, instead of going directly into a graphic design program I went for a two year pre-university program in the fine arts. I thought it would broaden my choices and technique. There I discovered that there was indeed such a thing as a breathing artist. After that I never considered studying design, I was an artist.

LO: What are the ideas in your work?

PSJ: I wish I knew! There are ideas that I like to think about, things like perception, things like how one person can connect to another. But often these are springboards to get going with a piece. When the piece is finished these ideas are still there but there is always something else that came quite by itself, and that’s about always what makes or breaks the piece. The trick lately, at least right now, is to leave the thing alone when I see it work. In the past, I was perhaps a little eager to imprint my ideas on the piece and force them on locations and actors that had something else, something important to bring. The ideas that I’ve been tossing around recently are still rather nebulous, I’m not sure that I should venture to pin them down like a recipe or a script. I’m interested in what makes us human on a very basic level. I’m inspired by the people around me and I would like to capture these fleeting moments when there is a connection that is made either between two people or within a person, where a little door opens up, if only for a second, into something bigger.

Pierre St-Jacques, Make Believe, 2009-2011, HD / Color / 16:9 Widescreen / Stereo.

LO: Your videos are so time-intensive. What is your process like?

PSJ: I write things down. I’ve got a series of bits and pieces of paper that constantly accumulate. I’ve got notes that I jot down on my laptop. These are sometimes descriptions of feelings, an idea for a scene… There comes a time when I feel that many of these disparate parts are actually related, that they articulate something larger. At that point, I sit down and, seamstress-like, stitch them together. After several iterations some of the ideas get tossed out, new ones get formed so that I end up with something that I feel is whole. Then I hire actors, find locations, shoot the thing and finally spend months in the dark editing it, while someone else writes music for it.

I find the process of shooting more and more enjoyable. I’m not sure whether that is why the pieces that I’m working on now, a series of five shorts entitled A Gathering of Shifts, are shaping up a bit differently. I’m doing a lot more shooting in tests and trials, if you will, playing and seeing how it comes together before tying it all up with the “real” shoot. They’re shorter than my usual video work, at five minutes each or less. They’re more formed by immediate visual impression. They are less “plan-and-shoot,” and more “shoot-think-shoot.” I’d like some of them to be more raw than some of my previous work. They are all shaping up to be three-screen compositions. It’s still very early, it’s a nice place to be.

LO: What are your thoughts on other video art that you see at galleries?

PSJ: It’s like everything else: I like a very small portion of it. It would be easy to say that I like the more polished, narrative pieces that I encounter because I have that vocabulary and therefore might get more out of them. But I especially like to see something different that shows me something that I’m not playing with already. I remember a video many years ago at the “Greater New York” show at PS1 of this dog hanging and biting on this rope. It was fabulous! I normally don’t go for quick, low-res stuff but this had an energy and rawness that I liked. Those type of things almost never happen.