Aimee Goguen is a video artist and experimental animator working and living in Los Angeles. A sampling of her video works were recently screened at the Institute for American Art, bringing her work to a Maine audience. Shot using a Hi8 camcorder, the works show sexuality humorously, in which the human body is typically the central focus. The repetitive sequences, such as thick, sticky, goo trickling down the body is what makes these pieces affective and build a tension of discomfort for the viewer and actors.
Goguen received her BFA and MFA from CalArts, and has shown work at venues such as Anthology Film Archives, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, Night Gallery and Druid Underground Film Festival. She has performed in video work by Harry Dodge, and provided animated sequences for William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010). Meg Hahn asked Aimee some quick questions about her practice, influences, and the role of gender and technology in her work.
a list for Aimee Goguen by Aimee Goguen
affect, affective flattening, activity, bad behavior, honesty, dishonesty, seductive, disposal, subject, power, pleasure, submissive, sorrow, exhaustion, limitations, boundaries, care, love, sensitivity, human nature, human behavior, human sexuality, human emotion, manipulation, containment, compression, comfortability, adoration, intimate, personal history, private, personal, breathing, story telling ability, tall tale, haunted, missing, reenactment, scabbing, splashing, rotting, melting, repulsion, psychosis, rupture, failure, defecation, rejection, sloshing, sloughing, disgust, loss, spillage, overload, overflow, death, play, role play, ritual, reaction, overspill, injury, response, destroyer, eruption, lost time, anticipation, sex acts, shame, arousal, elevated, levitated, draining, on the ground, ground level, falsification of memory, affection, error, dirt floor, filthy, tension, trust, sequence of events, pretending, trickery, hypnotizing, meditative, sensory overload, compartmentalize, build-up, extra sensory perception, poltergeist, childhood, basement, trap doors, tunnels, boxes, building blocks, blocks, fail, distance, draining, swelling, floating, bleeding, barfing, oozing, sliming, slobbing, blobbing, dooming, pusing, prolapsed, putrification, pixilation, pixilated, guilt, puzzle, secret, breakdown, leaking, glowing, glow in the dark, phosphorescent, translucent, pattern, palette, constipation, layering, withholding, scale memory, systematic, butthole, out of body, desensitization, punishing, suspense, surface level, topical, structure, size, shape, value, impair, gleaming, flaming, cognitive, responsibility, portrayal, role playing, study, fraud, phony, bogus, termination, biological functions, joy, happy, examination, access, abscess, tumor, fat, hair, deeper infection, anus, cavity, trigger
FIVE QUICK QUESTIONS FOR AIMEE
Meg Hahn: How would you describe your practice: your influences, process, and what you’re exploring? What do you want audiences to feel or take away?
Aimee Goguen: I am excited by human behavior and influenced by disgust. I write intuitively. Example: punches rear-view, example: slaps dick down, example: pussy eats house. I document the chosen action with a camera. Whatever happens will happen or not based on the laws of science.
MH: Can you talk about your choice of technology (Hi8)? Is there pressure to convert to something more digitally contemporary? Do these videos have a time or place you’re aiming to create/depict?
AG: My video work is timeless and the location is not important. I am depicting an action. The action is repetitive. This becomes a feeling.
MH: Are the works supposed to be viewed linearly or independently? Do you see these pieces as being focused on performance, narrative, formal/technical qualities, or is it all simultaneous?
AG: I prefer as many videos as possible, multi-channeled, lo-fi, and looped. Inside a kind of video hell, concentrated by mess and agitation. A climactic space of layering and meditative unrest. My friends will perform the action selected from writing but their response is unwritten. My writing for the use of video production would be closest to a shot list break down even though I am familiar with screenplay format I do not care to write traditional scripts or make narrative movies.
MH: Can you explain the role of gender and sexuality and dominance/submission in your work, especially considering your role as the author?
AG: Play is important. I can NOT explain the role of gender or sexuality as an E.T.
MH: In some of the videos we can hear you giving directions. Do you feel any sense of compromise because of the collaborative nature of relying on others to provide what you’re envisioning?
AG: Let me lubricate. The collaborative nature is possible or impossible, so the roles and the rules may change. In this space people are very sensitive, there is a lot of care and adoration involved. We become flexible, our knees touch our ears. Without my friendships most all of my video work would exist only as writing.
Want to be featured in The Chart? We’re always looking for artists that are doing interesting things in Maine, artists who are from Maine and making work elsewhere, or artists who have a connection to the state in some way. Send us an email at info@thechart.me with a link to a recent body of work and we may profile you!
Meg Hahn currently lives and works in Portland, Maine. She graduated from Maine College of Art with a BFA in painting and a minor in Art History. Meg was a finalist for the Joseph A. Fiore Painting Prize (Damariscotta, ME), and has attended the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Hewnoaks Artist Colony (Lovell, ME), the Monhegan Artists’ Residency (Monhegan Island, ME), and will be a resident this summer at The Sam and Adele Golden Foundation Residency Program. She is also interested in other forms of art practice including curation. Meg is a co-director at Border Patrol (Portland,ME) and works out of the SPACE Studios building.