REBECCA SHAPASS 

Working interdisciplinarily, Rebecca Shapass creates bio-mythographic, audio-visual worlds where the fissures between personal and collective memory are mined to reveal fragile systems of perception and remembering. Across film, video, installation, performance, and text, she interweaves anecdotal and diaristic storytelling with broader cultural and social narratives about gender, sexuality, spirituality, and labor. At this nexus of self and other, Shapass constructs cinematic and physical spaces where the boundaries of identity, intimacy, and power are tested and transgressed.

Rebecca’s work has been exhibited and screened with institutions and festivals including Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Knockdown Center (Queens, NY), Open Signal (Portland, OR), amongst others. In 2018-19, Rebecca was a part of Smack Mellon’s Artist Studio Program where she was also a NY Community Trust Van Lier Fellow. Previously, she has been a resident at NURTUREart (Brooklyn, NY), Signal Culture (Owego, NY), and Crosstown Arts (Memphis, TN). Rebecca graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where she studied Film & Television and Art History. Currently, she is pursuing her MFA at Carnegie Mellon University (2020/23).

Hi Rebecca! Thanks for joining me for Mint Tea. To begin, what’s your favorite tea? If you don’t drink tea, what kind of coffee or drink do you enjoy the most?

Hi! I'm excited to be here. I am a coffee person, 110%. Black coffee, all the time.

Could you tell me about your background and your artistic practice?

I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Staten Island, then went to high school in Manhattan at LaGuardia, where I studied acting. Towards the end of that experience, I think there was an element of control I wanted. I like acting, and I still perform in a lot of my works, but I became way more drawn to directing. So, I went to NYU Tisch for film and TV to study filmmaking. During and after school, I interned at some galleries, got invested in the experimental film scene in New York, and worked for some video artists and filmmakers – dealing with their archives, and editing their work. This slowly transitioned into more of a studio practice. I definitely see performance, photo, filmmaking and archiving come into my work in very prominent ways.

I mostly film videos, and sometimes I do installations. Recently, I’ve been working a lot more on text-based work. I'm excited about the potential of doing more live performance, when COVID subsides a bit.

What projects are you working on right now?

Right now, I'm finishing up an experimental personal documentary about love and marriage, and my family's lineage with them. I've been doing a lot of work on darkness. Currently, I'm making a performance that happens in the dark that is based on sound and text, which will be read out loud. I'm also working on a video about darkness. This is ironic, right? Because the video is light… That’s something I've been thinking about. But yeah… I’m doing experiments in the dark and walking around in the dark with a GoPro strapped to my body, and trying to figure out what that means.

I am the most familiar with your film work, but I know that you also work with many different media. Can you talk about how and why you choose to work with the media that you do?

I think sometimes it's more practical. For example, right now I'm working on darkness, and you think what's the best way to work and work with darkness? Well…obviously to be in the dark, make a performance. I think I do whatever the work sort of necessitates. Often there's a sense of comfort with video because that's sort of like my native language. But I think whatever medium the project seems to call for that best expresses the ideas is what I follow. This means that I'm always like trying to learn something new, which is fun and also frustrating sometimes.

You told me you are also working with text recently. How was that?

It's interesting because filmmaking is almost a refusal of language in so many ways. It’s a language of images. So I find it funny that I feel so drawn to language, text and words right now. It's limiting in productive ways. I'm always looking to expand words as a form by thinking about how I can play with these words or make the words feel new.  How can I make the experience of these words somehow different than they're usually engaged with?

Can you talk about the relationship between your film practice and your installation and sculptural works? How does working in multiple media affect your practice?

I think they all inform each other. Sometimes they necessitate each other in a way. For example, with the work I've been doing in the dark, I find that I get really lost almost in these big concepts. So, I returned to filmmaking or video making as a way of trying to understand what I'm doing. Similarly, sometimes I'll be making physical objects as a way to think through a concept, and without my even knowing it, I'll film them and they wind up in the video. In “Eggless,” the text based collages with family photos serve as some of the images in the film. I think it's always a conversation, and sometimes kind of departing to a different medium helps me understand what I'm doing elsewhere.

How important is the way your films are displayed to you? It’s clear that for some of your works your installations of your films are very intentional.

It depends on the film. For me, the CRT monitors that I use in some works have a physical presence that a projection does not have or that like an LED monitor doesn't have because it's flat. When I was a kid, we had CRT monitors in my house and a VHS player in it. At that time, they were these amazing devices. But, now I think they've become so specific to a time there's this sort of like retro nostalgia that comes with using those monitors. I think about that a lot more when I use them in my work. I'm like, is this serving me? Something that's a projection is so different than something that's on a monitor and takes up space. I think once something is on a monitor, it becomes sculptural. 

What is the process like when you create your film work? Do you collect the footages first? Do you write or select the narration first?

I think it depends on the work. It’s personally easier for me to work when I know the narration ahead of time. But sometimes, I film an image and I think about it, like oh, I really want to use that image in a film. Then I'll edit a video together while thinking about what are these clips are doing together? Then I kind of write to them, or respond to the images more. It's easier for me to work when I have the writing first, but it's more exciting, and revealing, when I don't have the writing and I let the images kind of guide me.  

You seem to have a lot of old video footage that you taped that you incorporate into your works. Where do you keep them? How do you remember to include them in your films? 

When I was growing up, my family owned a chain of one-hour photo stores in New York. So, my dad just made like tons of images of me as a kid. It's been a part of my work since I was in college. I found the tapes and then asked my family for more. I have 16 mm, Super 8, VHS, DVD… like, every format, and I keep everything in like a kind of very organized, temperature-safe closet in my mom's house. I take with me a copy of the digitized archive on a hard drive pretty much wherever I'm going because I always know, at some point, I will rely on it in some way.

Sometimes, I misremember things. That's the most exciting, I'm like, “Oh, I'm going to go get this clip of this that I know is on that tape!” and then I go in and I've totally remember it differently, which is more exciting because it reveals itself to me. There’s something psychological with memory that I’m interested in there, and sometimes that will wind up being in the film, with me misremembering. 

Can you talk about any imagery or symbols that you like to work with? Your work may have evolved at this point, but I remember a time when you worked with a lot of eggs and food.

The reason I started working with eggs was because as a vegetarian, I ate a lot of eggs. I was eating tons of eggs all the time. Then, I developed like a very severe egg allergy. This thing that had been so nourishing to me became almost a literal poison to my body. I would eat them, and I would have these crazy reactions. So, I thought about that a lot. I was thinking about that a lot, and around the same time, I had watched this BBC documentary series where they talk about how eggs are not needed in Betty Crocker’s cakes at all. Writing on the box to add eggs is something the marketing team came up with to make housewives feel like they were doing labor. Fake labor so you can feel like you you've done something for your family. And you've contributed also on like some weird, sexual like, production, egg, ovary level… I thought that that was so interesting and so sneaky and cunning and sick. Then, it kind of expanded into my relationship to Catholicism. My mom is Catholic, and my dad is Jewish. I always remember Easter egg hunts as a kid and my dad, kind of cracking jokes about the whole thing. Like, Did Jesus lay the eggs? Where did the eggs come from? All this stuff that I realize now really made me think about these things.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about electricity and light. I've been making cute little power switches with children’s clay. I've been thinking a lot about power, so I make work with power strips and just play with them and re-sculpt them. But I guess it relates to the eggs, like what powers us, what fuels us? I always think about energy a lot. That's very important to me.

What does religion mean to you?

Previously, it would appear in my work in a much more like, literal way. I grew up really Catholic and went to Catholic school every day of my life, from kindergarten to the eighth grade, and sat through 45 minutes of religion. I think it made me embody a lot of shame, especially as a woman, like the kind of shame related to guilt, and related to my body, and showing my body. There was also always that tension of belief because of my dad, which I think made me really curious about religion. I mean, I guess you make what you see to some extent, or transform what you see, and I grew up with a lot of that imagery. Using it in my work has been a way of reclaiming it for myself. I'm very interested in the god image, like what does it mean that, at least in Catholicism, we just depict God as like a big white man in heaven? Like this big white man looking down on me is very traumatic. I don't think that's a productive way of like moving through the world. Of course, in Judaism, you're actually not supposed to depict God. There should be no God images. So I've become very interested in what evokes an imageless God? I'm also interested in the play on that language as a filmmaker, like the image as god, and how the images of god build our truth. 

What is your favorite color?

I know they’re not colors, but I’ve been really into the play between black and white, and the idea of absence… I think both colors symbolize absence, which is interesting because they're two completely different things that are also on the same spectrum.

Is there a new medium that you would like to try, or to work in more?

I really want to perform live. I think we all perform in our lives every day, everyone's a performer, and I really want to do a live performance. Community organizing is a big part of my practice, and I feel like engaging with the community and bringing them into my performances would be really gratifying and exciting for me. For the last show I did before COVID, I was working with these really fantastic women who run this series called “Girl on Grill,” and they show a lot of food related art. I adore them. I did a project where I kind of converted the format of a Catholic Mass into this Betty Crocker worship because I was super obsessed with the myth of Betty Crocker at the time, and how we have multiple images of Betty Crocker, but she's not real and never existed. I dressed up as this priestess and conducted a Mass, and at the end, we all ate cookies that I had made that were from one of Betty's books. We broke bread. So goofy. 

I met you in New York City, and I know that you are born and raised in New York. Do you think the city influenced your practice?

I mean yeah, like this is so special because you're the first friend that I made directly through making art. We've shown work together so often, and it's really special to sit here and have a conversation with you knowing that our friendship started with me on a ladder being like, “Hey, can I borrow your fishing wire?” I think that's the thing about New York. There's such energy to New York and to the people. I think actually growing up on Staten Island is very different than growing up “in New York.” I was born in Brooklyn, raised on Staten Island, and Staten Island is like, super conservative, so I was definitely the weird girl. I think if I had grown up in Brooklyn, I wouldn't have been weird, really at all. But where I was, I was the weird girl. Then, when I went to high school in New York, I blossomed into the seed of who I would become. Yeah, New York is a special place, and I think it's taught me to talk to everyone. I love to talk to everyone and engage with everyone.

How do you stay connected to your community?

Normally, I'm the organizer, organizing screenings, events, potlucks, art shows... Now, we haven't done a lot of Zooms because I think everyone's Zoomed out. But, you know, usually it's a matter of being like, “Hey, you know, we're just going to do a thing.” And I think it's important to make work, but I also think it's equally as important to discuss work. So I like when people send me their films and ask me what I think. And I like to send these long emails discussing the work. I think that's a big part of staying connected to your community. The Triple 9 art collective, that was my whole community for so long. I believe collectives are self-forming and that it's like, who wants to be around, who wants to hang out and have a conversation, right? I don't ever believe that community should be an insular thing. I think community should always be an open door, like, whenever you want to come, my door is open. And that's how we've always operated Triple 9, right, whether we have a space or whether we're kind of roving. Like, please bring your friends, please bring more people because we just want to love on you. 

What’s your favorite tool?

I really love a video camera. I mean, I'm not partial to cameras, which is maybe a bad thing, because I tend to shoot in a million formats, and then make films that are like hodgepodged together. But I've been shooting on a Blackmagic with a nice lens, and in slow motion a lot, which is just really fun and exciting. I've loved using that. But also, my dad gave me this medium format camera. I don't shoot medium format that often, but this is one of my favorite cameras. I don't use it that often, but it is just really special to me. I used to love walking around with disposable cameras and just taking pictures of trash. Like, I think trash on the street is some of the most exciting art I see. You know, just like street sculpture is its own thing. I also like to take like portraits and I'm actually working on a little booklet right now that I've been calling “Camera Duet,” which is like a series of instructions for two people with a camera. Like ways of activating your body in relation to the camera, different kinds of performances or actions two people can do together to create images.

What is the space where you do your work?

I used to love to spend a lot of time in my studio and I still do. Lately I've been feeling, maybe it's just COVID related stuff, where I want to be out in the world so badly, so I've been filming a lot at night and taking my cameras out at night and just kind of walking around. I like to film in my home a lot. I think a lot of my work is very personal and filming in my bed actually. I feel a lot of my works are related to beds or bathrooms. Yeah, my domestic space is really important to me and I feel like the studio and the domestic space overlap a lot for me. 

How do you deal with the separation or merging of personal or private spaces?

Badly. I’ll be honest, like not great. I mean, my work is so personal, like the documentary I sent you that I worked on is all about my love life, and I film my family all the time. Constantly I'll be home, I'll be thinking about something and I'll be like, I need to call my mom and record her. And I'm like, “Hey, can I interview you right now?” I try not to rope other people into it too much. But yeah, I think the blurring of space is really hard for me sometimes. I think that the separation most often happens when I put on my organizer hat. Where it's not about my work, it's about the other artists’ work and we're going to do a show. I like to be able to do that for my friends and for other people because it really helps me stop.

Do you have any ritual that helps you get into the zone?

Every day, when I come into my studio, I film myself, like I put on music and I film myself dancing to a song. I dance for one song, and so sometimes they'll be like, moshing, sometimes they'll be like, boogieing. I feel like it's just like, to get the energy out, and just like, okay, reset. Also, I think there's a tendency for the studio to become a place of like labor, where I have to do this work. I don't want that, I want to feel joyous in my practice. I also write in the morning, like I write for two to three hours every day. That's really important to me. So I would say like my studio practice begins at 6am when I'm sitting down to do my writing.

How do you know when you are finished with your artwork or a body of work?

I never do. It's usually like the situation that I'm in now where someone else says “Hey, I'd love to like do something with this with you.” And then I'm like, Oh my God. I have to finish this. But I like to leave an open door with my work. I always think I'm trying to get to a place, but I'm always arriving somewhere else. And so I think it's important to be fluid and, for my practice, to be able to be like, I'm doing this and maybe I'll go back and do more of that. Whenever I finish something, I almost always feel an ellipsis.

Who are your favorite practicing artists? I am always looking for more artists to interview.

I mean, I always cop out on this one, and say my friends. But I mean, yeah, I feel like the people in my community really affect me. But then when I think about the people who I research right now and who, I look at their work, and I'm like, I want to do this. Like, Aki Sasamoto is super important to me, she meets performance and sculpture. Gordon Hall is super important to me. Chloe Bass, who teaches in the Social Practice program in Queens, she just had that amazing show last year at the Studio Museum in Harlem. I find that it's funny that as a filmmaker or a video artist, I look at a lot of sculptor-performers.

What gives you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach? 

I think when I connect the dots in my research, which is super nerdy, but it could be anything. Given that I’m thinking so much about, like physics and inertia, or I think about light, okay, and then I think about, can you see a reflection of complete darkness? And then I'll be walking around, and like, look down an alleyway, and I'll see something and I'll be like, click-click-click. Like, the way the light falls off is like really important to me, the way that when you look down an alleyway, there's like a point of complete darkness at the end is really exciting. I think falling in love gives me the feeling of butterflies, but I don't think it needs to be like a romantic love. I want to fall in love with my friends. I want to fall in love with intellectual ideas, and I think like we devalue that sort of love, in favor of romantic things.

www.rebeccashapass.com | @rshapass