Miranda July
Miranda July
Miranda Jennifer Julyis an American film director, screenwriter, actor, author and artist. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital media presentations, and live performance art. She wrote, directed and starred in the films Me and You and Everyone We Knowand The Future. Her most recent book, debut novel The First Bad Man, was published in January 2015. July was a recipient of a Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth15 February 1974
CityBarre, VT
CountryUnited States of America
The job of the artist is to point at things.
Since I started making art, I've always had some kind of project that was really about and for other people, because I think I just need that balance to feel sane myself — you know?
So the recordings were these immersive landscapes, and yet, unlike the performances that almost no one would see, I had a sense that these could live forever. I was just starting to get my head around the democratic aspect of art; I didn't want to make rarefied things that were either alienatingly obscure or elite and art-worldy, so a recording that anyone could buy was a great medium.
The things keeping you back-these embarrassing, boring, stupid obstacles-are the heart of what it is to be human. They’re the whole reason for making and needing art. So you might as well go ahead and begin in whatever way you can right now.
The worst thing to me is the limited vocabulary of childhood sexuality. Parents, more than anyone, know their kids are sexual.
I have endless sympathy for (them) because I see myself so much in them.
There are going to be points of contact. That's just a fact. That it's not inherently bad. In reality, the way that the two worlds interact are often very, very subtle, almost inarticulatable.
I wanted to talk about that and show that without having to just have a vocabulary of blame or shame -- to say that it can be both really scary and OK, ... It can also be sad and exciting and even kind of fulfilling. It's really not a good conversation to leave to ped-ophiles. It's much better to actually talk about it without pathology.
As a filmmaker, the last thing you want to do is place kids in emotional or physical jeopardy, ... Especially for me, coming from a place of really loving those kids.
I have this audiotape that I made when I was like 6 or 7 that's just one side of a conversation with spaces for me to fill in the rest, ... So, I could play it back and talk to myself. Don't know if that's art, but it was definitely a sort of way of taking care of myself.
My ideal life is just lounging around the house and every once in a while I'll kind of write something, and then I'll leave and eat something and masturbate or whatever - just this very fluid life of comforting myself.
You've got the people you know, which are problematic. Always. They're rich but they're also real people living their lives alongside you. Then you've got the people that you make-up completely, who are often missing a dimension if they don't have some reference to real people. So strangers exist in this in-between space, where in not knowing them, you are creating a fiction for them, even in passing, but at the same time, there they are, with their actual bodies and their actual clothes. It's totally enticing.
I'm interested in what the virtues of all those things are, especially for the kind of person who's made their own world that revolves around them, like writers do. It seems especially precious.
I mean obviously we're all dealing with a lot more strangers due to the web. I'd say it has more to do with the quality of interactions. When you're physically interacting with someone, it forces you to be more present and probably a little more uncomfortable. You have to tolerate being outside the comfort of your own home.