Jack Walsh

I make films to impact people's lives in two ways. One is to tell stories that our culture excludes, or when included seek homogeneous ends. Secondly, I wish to create films that employ non-illustrative visually and aurally devices to tell these stories, thereby showing audiences that there truly are alternative modes of expression outside the corporate/Hollywood system. Don't get me wrong, I love Hollywood's excesses, its aural and visual barrages. I don't even care about all of the money Hollywood throws at films that I may find artistically or socially reprehensible. That's a business; its motive is clear and simple - profit. My motive is equally clear and simple - alternative. Rather than striving for homogeneous ends, however, I choose heterogeneous ones. Viewers of my work may relate to certain mass culture phenomena, e.g., pop music, movie plot synopses, magazine and postcard images (after all we do share a certain American culture no matter how we may try to distance ourselves from it), but my desired end is to make viewers see difference. Not all of us are alike. Sexuality, class, ethnicity divide us. Frankly, it's the ruptures, divides, and/or dissonance that interests me most. The in-between places that are so often absent from the dominant forms of enter- and infotainment.

I believe that film, and by extension video, need to be visually dynamic, socially engaged, and constantly attempting to break new ground. To be an artist in these last years of the twentieth century requires drawing from an increasing amount of sources (to the point of overwhelming) and to use, steal, appropriate and recontextualize them. MTV and advertising, however, have completely co-opted experimental. Fragmentation sells be it jeans, CDs, lifestyles, or food. To remain fresh amidst this mass co-optation and regurgitation of technique is what I see as my greatest artistic challenge as Y2K quickly approaches. My creative work over the last fifteen years stands as a response to the onslaught of our dominant culture.