Statement Jamsen Law, 2003

Jamsen Law: artist statement

My video works always deal with "odd" moments in life. I believe that those oddness are created by gaps where we fall back into our own selves. Those perhaps are also some disconnections with the outside world. In modern life, it is almost impossible to be not connected to some sorts of network. These networks, from interpersonal and physical to digital, let us multiply our life. If we still have one subjectivity, this must be a fragmented one. Fragmentation of body is also a usual practice in my video. Without any complex thoughts, I use my camera and editing machine to deconstruct lives in terms of time and scale. As we still live according to a linear time, the fragments of the different perspectives of us also lay on different sections of our timelines. By cutting continuous living into actions, cutting actions into movements, and even dividing movements into gestures and postures, I can see the "oddness" from another angle and the fragments of footage can also reflect more deeply of what have been captured. Another way I work with it is to single out parts of movement and gesture in term of scale. Instead of dealing with a complex body, I would rather choose to blow up the power of a little gesture and find out the signal and desire inside. Dealing with what I understand is not my interest. My drive of using and making art with digital tools is that I want to understand more how people can live so differently, so different from what I can imagine and I am familiar with.

Associação Cultural Videobrasil