JD Samson
Interdisciplinary
Artist in Residence, 2015
↗ jdsamson.tumblr.com
Artist Statement
Most well known as a musician, I started my journey into the art world via adapting film and film theory into edited experimental movement drawings (sometimes accompanied by film itself). Throughout my career as a musician, I have been able to work with the idea of adaptation by developing sample-based music, as well as building sets and costumes in which I have worked on developing visual counterparts to the music that is performed. I have always been interested in this idea of adaptation, and how it relates to the queer body, class struggle, as well as radical feminist ideas of the transformation of a patriarchal society and the future of our radical communities.
While at Headlands
During my time at Headlands, I plan to begin to develop a project in which music and/or experimental sound accompanies abstract visual art components in a multi-media exploration of failure and conflict within community. This adaptation from visual stimulant to sound, intended to be experienced simultaneously, will contain content that draws from ideas around the failed artist, damaging dualities, the injured collaboration, and the broken relationship to its own audience. Not only will I be exploring ideas of adaptation, duality, and collaboration in music theory and art history, but I will be dipping into the complex web of broken communities and staring deep into the queer body as a space of lost confidence and adaptation from and into itself throughout time.
MEN. “Credit Card Babies”, June 2009; video of live performance at the New Museum.
MEN and Techa Noble. “Who Am I To Feel So Free”, December 2010; music video.
JD Samson. “Humpty Dance”, 2000; video documentation of installation, 16mm film, projector, paper, craypas, tracing paper, pop radio.
Semenya
MEN. “Semenya”, October 2013.
