Jocelyn
Taylor . . .
Jocelyn Taylor is a video artist
from Washington, DC. Her artistic training began in high school
at Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts where she
studied classical and modern dance forms intensively for four
years. She later attended Northern Virginia Community College
and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC where she
studied photographic media. Upon moving to New York City in
1989, Jocelyn expanded her sense of the visual and the political
as a member of DIVA-TV (Damned Interfering Video Activist
Television), an affinity group of the AIDS activist
organization, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). She was
involved in DIVA TV’s collectively produced video, Stop the
Church. In 1990, Jocelyn joined House of Color, a video
collective formed to make images that counteracted
disproportionately exoticized media about lesbians and gays of
non-European backgrounds. She made her first single-channel work
includes, Father Knows Best, 20 min. (1990), Looking for LaBelle,
5 min. (1991), 24 Hours A Day , 9 min. (1993), Frankie & Joice,
19 min. (1994), and Bodily Functions, 15 min (1995). Her video
installations include, Alien at Rest, Deitch Projects, NYC
(1996), Something Private, Franklin Furnace NYC, Museo De Bellas
Artes, Caracas Venezuela (1996 & 1998), Jocelyn on Chair/Eyes in
Bowl Momenta Art, NYC (1997), and Taboo Series # 1, Two Kissing
Women, Rush Art, NYC (1997). Jocelyn’s work has shown at the
Museum of Modern Art, NYC, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
Johannesburg Biennial, South Africa, CURARE in Mexico City and
other national and international venues. Television screenings
of her single-channel work have aired on HBO, PBS, Channel 35/WNYC,
and nationally on public access stations.
Jocelyn began working as the Screening Director for Downtown
Community Television Center in 1993. While at DCTV she organized
publicity and programming for three yearly video festivals as
well as a special weekly series featuring work by women makers,
experimental projects, and video performance artists. Jocelyn’s
experience in alternative media led her to DYKE-TV, a cable
television program made by, for, and about the lesbian
community. She worked as an anchor for the news segment of the
program and frequently produced calendar and arts segments for
the show from 1994 until 1996. In September of 1995, Jocelyn
coordinated the DYKE-TV television crew for the United Nations
World Conference on Women in Beijing, China.
"Alien at Rest" 1996
Video projection
Jocelyn has lectured on her work at Colgate
University in Hamilton, New York, Rutgers University, SUNY New
Paltz, and the New School for Social Research among others.
Within the art community she has given presentations on her
installation work at The Drawing Center, The New Museum, San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the College Art Association
Conference (Austin, 1994). Jocelyn has taught young people the
art of making video for several years. She initially began
teaching production workshops for Dyke TV in 1993. Later, she
worked with young women at the youth drop-in center, Project
Reach, as an artist-in residence during the summer of 1996. She
stressed collaboration with the students, encouraging them to
trust their own ideas and methods of production. The video, Can
You Dig It, an analysis of hip-hop/rap music and it’s effects on
women, was produced as a result. Jocelyn recently completed a
collaboration with students in Miami public high schools as part
of the Miami Art Project, a city-wide public art initiative. She
guided the students during the creation of eight experimental
public service announcements which were shown in the Miami
International Airport during the months of January and February
of 1998.
Photo Collage
Jocelyn often includes performance in her work
and has been invited by her peers to appear in their projects.
Among these collaborations are Sluts and Goddesses by Annie
Sprinkle, We Interrupt This Program...by Creative Time, and
Watermelon Women by Cheryl Dunye. In addition, she has been
writing essays about her ideas and work since 1992. Her writing
has been published in Outweek, Art Papers, Felix Magazine and SF
Cameraworks/The Lab Quarterly Journal. Her essay, "Testimony of
a Naked Woman" was published in Afrekete: An Anthology of Black
Lesbian Writing (Catherine McKinley, Joyce Delaney, eds. Anchor
Books, 1995) and To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the
Face of Feminism(Rebecca Walker, ed. Anchor Books, 1996).
Jocelyn was nominated for and received the
Vito Russo Award, a completion grant for artist’s
works-in-progress, from the New Festival, a lesbian and gay film
and video festival held yearly at the Public Theater. She has
also been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation (1994), Art
Matters (1994), the New York State Council for the Arts(1994),
and the National Endowment for the Arts via the Mid-Atlantic
Regional Artist Foundation (1993) and the Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts (1997). In 1994, Jocelyn attended the Whitney
Independent Study Program. Her video installation, Alien at
Rest, is part of the Dakis Jannou Collection of Contemporary Art
in Greece. Currently, Jocelyn sits on the Artist Advisory Board
for the New York Foundation for Arts.
For the past three seasons, Jocelyn has assisted the press
representative of the Museum of Modern Art during the New
Director’s/New Films Festival held collaboratively with the Film
Society at Lincoln Center. She also works as the Director’s
Liaison for the New York Film Festival as a go-between for
directors, press contacts, and the Film Society Festival as one
of the series’ programmers.
Source: MS. JOCELYN
TAYLOR, PROFESSOR OF VIDEO DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NEW YORK
UNIVERSITY:
http://www.helloworld.edu/jtaylor.html
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