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Hannah Epstein
Hannah Epstein Hannah Epstein AKA hanski is a super fox who learned to use a camera.
artist to the stars. She shoots it all! You name it, she'll point a camera at it.
Now she fancies herself some kind of a scam
Have you ever heard the myth of the buffoon?
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Didn't think so. It's never heard of you either.
"hahaha", the textual form of laughter.
Hannah Epstein has grown up fascinated that the first two letters of her name spell "Ha" as in
Probably doesn't matter though. And that's what she's all about.
An interview with
Hannah Epstein You have been inspired by informal storytelling traditions: this is particularly evident in That's Good Scrap, where you show an incredible balance between ironical and surreal imagery. How did you develop your style, Hannah? Whatever you might be perceiving as style is entirely accidental. It's the result of a process build around chaos brought about in editing. I often don't shoot footage with a story in mind, I shoot to document the banalities and the personal and the day to day passing of time, which for those around me is something of an annoying reflex, then I sit down with the undifferentiated mass of images and hack at it until a storyline begins to emerge. It's a crude process that treats film and video as solid masses that can be formed and reformed like a kinetic sculpture or collage. It just so happens that I have been trying to mould meaning out of seemingly random images for so long that certain directions have proven fruitful in the past and I tend to repeat what has worked, trying to go deeper into those successful editing rabbit holes, which are infinite and multiply every time a decision is made. I think that push and pull between being legible and the video work as relic along a winding, self directed road of aesthetic and narrative exploration is what might come across as the current style, but I hope it's headed somewhere. So, yeah, for now what I think you're seeing is a lot of rejected and failed glimmers of a working ideal. Could you tell us a particular episode who has helped the birth of this project, or simply an epiphany, a sudden illumination? I grew up in Halifax, a small city on Canada's eastern coastline where I spent my adolescence and early adulthood being a smalltime badass
Hannah Epstein
and hanging out with bigger badasses, drinking, drugs, crime, the usual stuff that comes with being an overly energetic teenager in a conservative environment. Going through it I remember having the sense that I was slightly outside of everything, documenting various adventures for future projects, so none of it felt like a waste, it felt like I was stewing myself in good material. So time goes on and here I am, almost thirty, living in Toronto, pursuing some kind of art career, meanwhile most of my best friends from those earlier days are still in Halifax. For those friends who never really left, various indulgences have blossomed into full blown addictions and choices they have made; to get married, to have kids or do certain kinds of work are all things that now define the shape of their lives. For one such friend, Geoff Harrison, who we knew growing up as 'Lil Geoff or Punk Geoff, he now supports a wife and two kids by collecting and exchanging scrap metal for cash. When I learned that this was Geoff's new line of work and saw photographs of his van and the type of things he was collecting as well as the scrap yard itself, I contacted him to make sure that the next time I visited Halifax I could go with him. Early in the morning of May 26, 2014 I jumped into the cab of Geoff's truck to join him and another friend, Rob Munro, as they went about the rounds, targeting the areas scheduled for garbage collection.
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So that's a bit of a picture of how "That's Good Scrap" was started, though I feel I have to add that Geoff and I had a fascinating conversation during the shooting process, as he was clearly aware that he and his work were subjects of interest to me, he didn't want me to have the impression that he was somehow a victim of society to be doing this work. Geoff is a proud and thoughtful man who I respect, I tried to treat him like that during the making of the piece and I hope that comes across. We find that your art is rich of ironical references. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Well first of all, thanks. As for influences, I think I should say that being a repeat-outsider enough times can lead to create a solid yet difficult to name influence. In Halifax, I found myself as an outsider, tall, skinny, half-Latvian,
half-Jewish, that kind of combination was maybe too cosmopolitan for the city that not long ago stopped having a Catholic/Protestant division in the public school system. Then university in Newfoundland, studying Folklore? Like, what was that? I was an outsider in a place that considers itself to be the land of outsiders, the rejected bastard cousin of Canada and academia all in one. I have been drawn to these people and places who stand a step apart and have then aimed to step out further, the observer of the observed. I think this lends itself to creating an eye that sees the absurdity in what others may take as deep and serious. It is simultaneously encouraged by the attitude of rejection shared among these outsiders, one that doesn't give a fuck about official values and seeks for value in the singular pursuit of what is unique and sets them apart as good and worthy of celebration rather than quieting.
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What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction? Shared joy, which I know sounds like something off a Hallmark card, but it's true. The most fun I have had outside of sex is the few moments which can be achieved when a small group of people work together on something and laugh about it while making it and then watch themselves on screen and laugh even harder and then time goes on and they watch it again and they laugh the hardest of all. There is something about making video work that is like creating a time capsule to be revisited over and over. The closer the subject matter is to my heart then the closer it becomes as it goes on screen. In the moving images is the coded language of the deeply personal. Could you take us through your creative process when starting a new project? A former mentor once described my process as a great sucking in of everything around and digesting it internally then shitting out a piece. I think this is accurate. I am constantly engaged with collecting material and playing with it to see where it fits in amongst the other collected ideas and experiences then condensing it into a visible artifact. As such I am always watching and watching myself watch and making notes of this. I send myself a million text messages with key words of what I am seeing so I can be reminded of imagery when I sit down to compile the seemingly endless nonsense into gibberish. - Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts with us, Hannah. What's next for you? What are your next projects on the horizons? Hey, no problem. Entirely my pleasure. As for the future, I am moving to Pittsburgh at the end of July to start my MFA at Carnegie Mellon. This is nerve wracking since I have no arts education to date and am sort of jumping into the deep end of things, but because of this new high bar that's being set I have been focusing on developing ideas to take into the program. I am more and more interested all the time in combining video and games and then extending that into installations, so I will likely be playing with concepts of how to combine these things. Look out for some super weirdness.
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