Online Residency 2022

 

Biography

Jojin Van Winkle is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer, and educator. Her film, video, and photography research centers around the practice of listening, focused on resilience and the human condition. Through multimedia projects she blend external experiences with internal reflections. Her recent and ongoing work, The Destruction Project, was the subject of a solo exhibition at MMoCA (Madison Museum of Contemporary Art) October 2020–April 2021. The core of her practice is the process of documenting individuals, places, and objects revealing their stories and uncovering social and psychological implications of everyday existence.

Van Winkle has participated in artist residencies nationally and internationally, and exhibited large-scale installation art before pursuing lens-based media. She received a 2022 RAM Fellowship from the Racine Art Museum (RAM), which culminates in a solo exhibition in 2023. The experimental film from The Destruction Project won Best Experimental Video for the High Tatras Film & Video Festival (Slovakia). It has screened in national and international film festivals, including VASTLAB Experimental 2021 (Los Angeles, CA), Experimental, Dance, Music Film Festival 2022 (Toronto, Canada), and the Film Girl Film Festival 2022 (Milwaukee, WI).

Writing screenplays is an extension of Van Winkle’s practice. Her screenplay Tanked has received numerous film festival awards, including Best Feature Script in the Reykjavik Independent Film Festival in February 2022. Tanked is a finalist for the International Screenwriting Competition (New York, NY) and the Cowpokes Int’l Film Festival (TX), as well as nominated for Best Short Screenplay (unfilmed) for the Unrestricted View Film Festival (London, UK). Tanked is an official selection for the 2022 Fort Myers Beach International Film Festival (FL). In 2021, Tanked was a semi finalist for the Frances Bell Film Screenwriting Competition (London, UK).

In 2016-17 Van Winkle was an artist-in-resident at the Madison Children’s Museum, collaborating with 500 children on a multi-media permanent installation. For the Liberian land rights documentary, The Land Beneath Our Feet (2016, 60 min.), she was an associate producer, with additional camerawork. She was the USA-based cinematographer for PBS/Independent Lens documentary, In the Shadow of Ebola, (2015, 27 min.). Both documentaries screened at international and national festivals, winning awards.

As an assistant professor at Carthage College (Wisconsin/USA), Jojin Van Winkle teaches and directs the Photography and Film and New Media Program. She has a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and a Master of Arts (MA) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

 

Artist Statement

My art is experimental, grounded in the cinematic. I use 16mm film cameras, high-definition video cameras, DSLRs, and smartphones to make films, videos, and photographs. In my documenting and editing processes, slow-motion, fast motion, and layered imagery recur. My lens-based research centers around my evolving practice of listening, emphasizing resilience and the human condition.

During this pandemic, my moving image practice transformed to include performance. Sometimes I appear in the videos, performing for the camera as in This is Mine… (2020). Or I am performing with the camera like the twirling in Center of Gravity (2021). Or I utilize the camera’s POV articulating performative motion, as in The Destruction Project (2020).

Last summer, I began emphasizing doubling and silence in my work. I started documenting fragments of my daily walks: treetops blowing in the wind, shadows on streets, leaf patterns on grass, and lake horizons, spanning seasons. Peppered in the videos are simple scenes from spaces I inhabit (burning incense, windows) or outdoor sites I have briefly called home (campfire, waterfall). The kurana mediations 1 & 2 (2021) exemplify a Rorschach technique. This doubling creates an elongated center-focused frame with either a kaleidoscope effect as the images bend and turn or an expansive open center with doubling at edges. The silent videos invite the viewer to experience their breath and ambient soundscape as the imagery jumps from one scene to another.

The Destruction Project is a documentary-based, experimental film/video and still photograph project about destruction in the everyday lives of rural women. The film/video is presented in short chapters, with each one constructed differently. The imagery captures the unexpected beauty visible in change and loss: demolition derbies, agriculture, and blurry scenes. The soundscape includes interviews with women about the impact of destruction in their lives. The poetic text is from my journal entries.

Links

Website  www.jojinprojects.com