Interview of Mark O’Connell

interviewed by Microcinema


Microcinema: Why did you select this style of filmmaking when you set out to make your art?

Mark O'Connell: This isn't a style of filmmaking, in fact, it isn't filmmaking at all.
Filmmaking is a commercial/ industrial process built on celluloid.

Microcinema: This on the other hand is simple madness built on 0's and 1's. What were the initial emphases? The images or the story?

Mark O'Connell: My stuff isn't narrative, no story is involved, at least not in the usual sense. The images are important of course, but often in a more abstract
way, I mean, they're important in building rhythms, they're important because they're light or dark, hard or soft, or important as shorthand for different cultural beliefs, attitudes, positions, whatever.....

Microcinema: Try to help us understand why or how you feel your work is unique from other moving image artists?

Mark O'Connell: Not sure. I'm looking for new possibilities. I'm looking for new ways that moving image sequences might exist, new ways in which they might work. I
think that historically our approach to moving image sequences has been quite narrow, concerned mainly with narrative and theatre.

Microcinema: Computer software has always been one of your main "collaborators" - can you explain this "relationship" you have with technology?

Mark O'Connell: Computers, though they are still a pain in the ass, have pretty much freed us from the physical restraints imposed by film and video. They also allow for the fairly seamless integration of different kinds of media, ie. image, sound, text, blah blah blah.... They've made it possible for individual artists to manipulate these media with an extraordinary amount of control.

Microcinema: What drives your art? Sound/music or images? Is there a chicken or an egg?
There are omlettes. There is fried chicken. There are garbanzo beans.

Microcinema: How is Seattle as environment for the experimental film artist?

Mark O'Connell: Seattle is a sexless, provincial, middle class town, but it still beats LA.....

Microcinema: How important is telling a story in your works? How do you appoach telling a story in such an abstract medium?

Mark O'Connell: It's not, I don't.

Microcinema: Who would you want to see your films at a special screening if you had the choice of all living and dead? Why?

Mark O'Connell: Fucking weird question. Might be interesting to hear what Baudelaire had to say about 'em.

Microcinema: Is there anything else that you would like to tell us?

Mark O'Connell: No.