Video! Video! Zine is an accessible submission-based Internet archive of amazing moving images from around the world. Video! Video! Zine is devoted to obtaining visibility for moving image makers. Through monthly open calls, we motivate and encourage makers to participate, no matter what skill level or knowledge of moving image. The directors behind Video! Video! Zine are Zachary Hutchinson, Jared Kelley, and Emily Eddy.
Zachary Hutchinson (b. 1991) comes to art through costume making, make up, theater, video making and an obsessive attention to image and transgressive affect. She received her BFA at from SAIC and is a MFA candidate at UIC. She has had works shown in Montreal, Mexico City, San Francisco, CA, Austin, TX, Berlin, Germany, Athens, Greece and extensively in Chicago IL. She created VideoVideoZine.com in 2013.
Jared Kelley is a writer, performer, and video artist from Atlanta, GA based in Chicago, IL. His work focuses on distressingly uncomfortable meditative environments, repetition, and sleepy audience immersion. He studied Environment Design at the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales in Paddington, Australia and Fine Art at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He has exhibited visual work and performance in Atlanta and Chicago, USA, Seoul, South Korea, Sydney, Australia, and Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. He is currently dancing indefinitely in outer space.
Emily Eddy is a film, video, and digital media artist and curator based in Chicago, IL. She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, where she received her Bachelors in Fine Arts. Combining many different forms of moving image, her work utilizes strategies of video diaries, archival practices, and experimental documentaries. She has been curating film, video, and new media works at the “rough and ready” Nightingale Cinema in Chicago since 2013, and she is currently the distribution assistant at the Video Data Bank. Emily has shown work and programmed screenings at many venues in Chicago, as well as her hometown, Portland, OR, Reykjavik, Iceland, and various mid-western cities.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. ZH: I am an artist working primarily in video and the director and creator of Video! Video! Zine. I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life (no coast best coast). I moved from west Michigan in 2010 to Chicago for undergrad and have no plans to move. I don’t see this city as stepping stone city. But living here doesn’t really define me I guess… My favorite color is pink and i recently have taken up wearing bows in my hair. The bows make me feel liberated. JK: I’m Jared – I grew up in north Georgia, lived in Atlanta for about ten years and moved to Chicago in 2014. I’m a writer, designer, and video installation artist who sometimes dances and performs in my own work. I’m also one half of the sci-fi relaxation collaborative Queersar. EE: I’m Emily, I’m a film and video maker and curator. I’m the assistant director of the Nightingale Cinema in Chicago, and I’m the distribution assistant at the Video Data Bank.
What are a couple of your favorite videos you’ve featured? JK: Business Crush by Isabelle McGuire. Most of my work has an element of forced or coerced relaxation, and corporate business themed ASMR fits this pretty specifically. Hi Honey by Heather Marie because it is lighthearted while making it feel like it’s my fault that I feel strange and uncomfortable when watching it. FREE JAZZ by Anna Ialeggio because it shows a man directly dissociating from the realities of the world around him while also setting the atrocities of that world to music – which is my ideal state of being.
What is it like living and working in Chicago? JK: Chicago has the duality of being extremely easy to get lost in while also having an intimate beautiful niche for everyone – which stands in contrast to Atlanta where I’m from which is a unified end-to-end connected art community. I still feel brand new and overwhelmed at the diversity of interests and talent here. Chicago is exciting because it nurtures and sustains projects like Video! Video! Zine – while also making it possible for a million other independent arts organizations to thrive and maintain an audience as well. I’m also sure there’s a collaborator out there in Chicago who is interested in relaxation as art and time traveling with video and performance – and if that’s you, let me know because we aren’t getting any younger.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? EE: Last year, I curated a screening of Chicago moving image artists in Reykjavík, Iceland, and I have continued to collaborate with the Icelandic video community. Since then, I have curated a few shows at the Nightingale, showcasing intersectional feminist artists. Most recently, I finished a brand new video piece that I’m hoping to premiere soon! JK: I just completed an audio reactive projection as part of Erin Palovick’s “Un sound”, the sound design for Mary Grace Phillips’s “Stairs” and I’m currently working with Atlanta choreographer Hez Stalcup to reimagine the ideal queer adolescence in our upcoming “Jeremies”. Hez and I both grew up in hyper conservative evangelical households, so we’re hitting the reset button on our childhoods by dancing through vintage-porn-laden dreamscapes, coming sometime this fall. ZH: I’m always in the midst of making many different videos, kinda working on a musical- we’ll see. Coming up, I have a screening of 2 of my works (Rumble Bumble and REAL vs FAKE) at Flat Earth Fest in Iceland. Also my graduate thesis show at Gallery 400 is happening from March 28th til April 1st. I’m also going to a artist residency at the Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, Germany this October- If you live there hit me up! I don’t know anything about Berlin.
What are you really excited about right now? EE: I’m really excited for summer, to see the Whitney biennial this year, to go back to Iceland asap, and to assistant direct VVZ!
How did your interest in your work begin? ZH: I began Video! Video! Zine as a way to create an accessible platform for moving image makers as well as an archive of that work. Accessible is the key word here- we provide this platform for free. That means we never take money from anyone (including our annual film festival) and secure that our screenings are free and open to the public. Another thing I want to mention was talking to my interns about the videos we receive and how they vary in skill level, production quality and to be honest, taste. Now, taste is completely subjective- we know this, but when you look at video art or just media in general today there is an arguable objective taste or aesthetic that we can clearly see which is different from even a year ago. I think that it’s important to show work that defy this popular stance. I think that it’s our largest strength that we provide space for all kinds of videos be shown with out hierarchy in an accessible platform.
Currently watching? ZH: I was embarrassed for sometime to admit to this but I am a HUGE fan of Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe on Cartoon Network. I can’t imagine watching show in my adolescence that has confirmed non gender binary characters and blatant gay relationships. THIS IS A KID’S SHOW! And because it is a kid show it can be a little unrealistically optimistic but it’s a show created by a queer women with a group of mostly POC writers voiced by cast of mostly POC. How is this happening?!?!?!? I’m huge fan and getting a tattoo of the gems that are on the door to the temple depicted in the show very soon. EE: Star Trek, Seinfeld, trashy teen movies, British murder mysteries, and whatever artists are on screen at the Nightingale!
