Peggy Ahwesh (born 1954 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania)[1] is an American experimental filmmaker and video artist. She received her B.F.A. at Antioch College. A bricoleur who has created both narrative works and documentaries, some projects are scripted and others incorporate improvised performance. She makes use of sync sound, found footage, digital animation, and Pixelvision video. Her work is primarily an investigation of cultural identity and the role of the subject in various genres.[2] Her interests include genre; women, sexuality and feminism; reenactment; and artists' books. Her works have been shown worldwide, including in San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, London, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Créteil, France.[3] Starting in 1990, she has taught at Bard College as a Professor of Film and Electronic Arts. Her teaching interests include: experimental media, history of the non-fiction film, and women in film.[4]
Career
Peggy Ahwesh went to Antioch College, where she became enamored with the works of radical artists and filmmakers like Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Carolee Schneeman and Joyce Wieland. After college, she returned to her hometown of Cannonsburg, where she began her film career working on Super 8 film. She thought Cannonsburg was a small industrial town that offered a freeing artistic feel. During the 1970s, she became involved with the local punk rock scene, and would create short films with her friends documenting the punk bands.[5]
Following this, she began working at The Mattress Factory—a large art warehouse in Pittsburgh—where she began her own film series. One of her first guests was filmmaker George A. Romero. She began to show his work locally and befriended Romero's crew. By 1982, she began to work her way into the industry as a production assistant on Romero's feature films. There, she met good friends Natalka Voslakov and Maggie Strosser. Ahwesh claims Romero to be a huge influence on her as he was knowledgeable on race, gender, and independent films. Soon, Ahwesh joined Pittsburgh Filmmakers as a programmer. She also wrote grants and collaborated with local clubs and the University of Pittsburgh. In 1980, Ahwesh did a big group show of local filmmakers. She liked the idea of group shows because they got everybody involved.
By 1983, she created what is known as The Pittsburgh Trilogy—three films made back to back that documented the lives of her friends during the summer of 1983. Ahwesh claims the three films: Verite Opera (1983), Paranormal Intelligence (1983), and Nostalgia for Paradise (1983) are not diary films, narratives or documentaries but rather "portraits" of her friends. The three films helped explore Ahwesh's interest in her friends and helped answer the questions of what kind of relationship does one have with a person, what kind of relationship does the camera have with a person, how do you shoot positive and negative space and what is it about people that makes them interesting? Ahwesh was not aware that she had copied the name for the trilogy from another experimental filmmaker, Stan Brakhage.
In 1990, she received recognition for her film The Deadman (1990) due to her use of 16mm opposed to her favored Super 8. In 2001, Ahwesh took her art to another level by using footage from the game Tomb Raider in her experimental piece She Puppet (2001), which explored female identity and the evolution of technology.
In 1990,[6] she began teaching at Bard College. Currently, she is Professor Emerita[7] of Film and Electronic Art while pursuing her own projects.[8]
Speculum of the Other Woman, The Other Cinema; SF, CA
Ann Arbor Super 8mm Film Festival; Ann Arbor, MI Super 8 Solar System, Artists Space; NY
1984. One Person Shows
Women's Caucus for Art, National Conference; Boston, MA
Super 8 Motel, The Kitchen Center; NY Women in Film, William Penn Museum; Harrisburg, PA
Eiszeit Kino; Berlin, Germany
1984: Selected Festivals-Group Shows
Ironic Naturalism, Hallwalls; Buffalo, NY (screening/panel)[2]
Selected bibliography
Ahwesh, Peggy. "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." Film Comment 37 (July/August 2001) p 77.
Arthur, Paul. "Bodies, Language and the Impeachment of Vision: American Avant-garde Film at 50" Persistence of Vision No. 11 (1995) CUNY
Blaetz, Robin, ed. Women's Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008
Dargis, Manohla. "On The Deadman." Artforum, 28 (May 1990) pp. 29–30.
Gangitano, Lia. "Warhol's Grave", In Steve Reinke and Tom Taylor, ed. LUX: A Decade of Artists Film and Video. XYZ Books, Toronto (2000) pp. 306–11.
Gorfinkel, Elena. "Arousal in Ruins: The Color of Love and the Haptic Object of Film History." World Picture 4. Spring 2010.[9]
Griffin, Tim. "Bury the Lead", World Art, no. 16 (1998) pp. 22 – 25.
Gunning, Tom "Towards a Minor Cinema: Fonoroff, Herwitz, Ahwesh, Klahr, Lapore and Solomon" Motion Picture 3 (winter 89–90) pp 2–5.
Handelman, Michelle. "Women's Studies" Filmmaker Magazine (Winter 2002) p 12.
Hoberman, J. "Attack of the Mutants." The Village Voice 14 Mar. 2000: 115
Iles, Chrissie "Biennial 2002 Exhibition Catalogue", Whitney Museum of American Art
Jones, Kristin M. "Ahwesh at the Whitney." Artforum 36 (Nov 1997) pp. 118–119.
Lewis, Jon, ed. The New American Cinema. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998: 353-78
Marks, Laura U. "Loving a Disappearing Image" Cinéma et Mélancolie Vol 8, no. 1–2, Québec (1999), pp 93–111.
MacDonald, Scott, A Critical Cinema 5: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, University of California Press, 2006.
Russell, Catherine. "Culture as Fiction: The Ethnographic Impulse in the Films of Peggy Ahwesh, Su Friedrich, and Leslie Thornton." In Jon Lewis, ed. The New American Cinema. Durham & London: Duke University Press (1998) pp. 353–78.
Smith, Gavin. "The Way of All Flesh." Film Comment 31 (July/August 1995) p. 18. Taubin, Amy. "Women on Top" The Village Voice (August 5, 1997) p. 74.
Wees, William C. "The Color of Love and the Recycling of Pornography by Avant-Garde Filmmakers" FSAC Conference, Université Laval, May 2001. conference paper.
Wees, William C. "Peggy's Playhouse: Contesting the Modernist Paradigm", Women's Experimental Cinema: Critical Frameworks, Ed. Robin Blaetz, Duke University Press, 2006.
