Full interview with Juan Pablo Pacheco '14, Professor, Curator, Writer
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What did you do after Conn?
Right after finishing my Film Studies BA and a Self-Designed Interdisciplinary Major in Cultural Studies, I started grad school in the MFA program at the San Francisco Art Institute. I fell in love with the school because George Kuchar, one of the most important American experimental filmmakers, used to teach there right before he passed away, and his brother was still teaching. At the time, I was fascinated with the idea of expanding the film medium (especially Documentary filmmaking) into a more complex, theoretic, and experimental area. I loved my MFA experience, which introduced me into the Visual Arts world, as well as the curatorial world. I now feel like I inhabit all these spaces at once, in different ways and intensities depending on the projects I'm doing at the time. Now I'm living in Bogotá, Colombia, where I'm originally from. What are you doing now (jobs/projects)? I've been building a strong network of colleagues in Academia and in the arts, and now I'm a professor of Video Art and Digital Arts at the Xavierian University of Bogotá, in the department of visual arts. I am also the co-director of an artistic space called Plataforma Bogotá, an interactive media lab for art, science and technology. We do laboratories, which are spaces for open and interdisciplinary experimentation, sometimes to create prototypes and sometimes to deepen our understanding of certain ideas and processes. I am also a regular contributor to an online magazine based in San Francisco, called Dissolve SF. I'm currently working as a curator and jury for the first digital arts award in the African continent, a project called Africa ArtBox based in Senegal. I am constantly working on my scholarly writing along with my audiovisual and curatorial projects; they all inform each other in a very rich and powerful way. |
How did Film at Conn prepare you for the field?
I can't even begin to explain how important was the Film Department at Conn for my personal, professional and intellectual growth. First of all, I wouldn't be able to write properly in order to express my ideas and thoughts if it hadn't been for Dr. M.'s classes. The value she placed in deep and conscientious research, both visually and conceptually, with a profound interest in the social implications of our work, still determines my intellectual and scholarly path. The analysis skills that I acquired in those classes are what has allowed me to continue studying visual culture and its larger social and political implications. On the other hand, Professor Morin was incredibly influential in my own artistic practice and in the way in which I view the power of audiovisual culture. His classes were rigorous both technically and conceptually, instilling in us the most important thing that a professor can teach to students in creative fields; that the form and the content of what we produce is inevitably linked. This passion for the ethics of creation, and the deep thought that went into executing our ideas and translating them to images, is something I deeply value from my time at Conn. When I arrived to my MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, it became clear that I was very well prepared, as a thinker and a producer of visual culture.
What were your favorite things about Film at Conn?
The most important thing to me during those years in the Film Studies Department was the community we built. Along with our friends, we developed strong intellectual and eventually personal bonds with our professors, who became more like mentors of our own pedagogical and life processes. I remember loving the seminars with Dr. M., where we were all discussing deep and relevant ideas, that had an impact in the way we view our everyday lives, what we consumed, and what we eventually produced. The way her classes were structured was truly amazing! And I remember falling in love with the Bolex 16mm camera, taking Professor Morin's Experimental Cinema course. I think it was that class which had a deep impact on my life today, and it was the most amazing yet most challenging class I took in the production area of the department. I really loved the rigorous character of the department, its special combination of theory and production, and the openness for new ideas, new projects and experimentation.
I can't even begin to explain how important was the Film Department at Conn for my personal, professional and intellectual growth. First of all, I wouldn't be able to write properly in order to express my ideas and thoughts if it hadn't been for Dr. M.'s classes. The value she placed in deep and conscientious research, both visually and conceptually, with a profound interest in the social implications of our work, still determines my intellectual and scholarly path. The analysis skills that I acquired in those classes are what has allowed me to continue studying visual culture and its larger social and political implications. On the other hand, Professor Morin was incredibly influential in my own artistic practice and in the way in which I view the power of audiovisual culture. His classes were rigorous both technically and conceptually, instilling in us the most important thing that a professor can teach to students in creative fields; that the form and the content of what we produce is inevitably linked. This passion for the ethics of creation, and the deep thought that went into executing our ideas and translating them to images, is something I deeply value from my time at Conn. When I arrived to my MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, it became clear that I was very well prepared, as a thinker and a producer of visual culture.
What were your favorite things about Film at Conn?
The most important thing to me during those years in the Film Studies Department was the community we built. Along with our friends, we developed strong intellectual and eventually personal bonds with our professors, who became more like mentors of our own pedagogical and life processes. I remember loving the seminars with Dr. M., where we were all discussing deep and relevant ideas, that had an impact in the way we view our everyday lives, what we consumed, and what we eventually produced. The way her classes were structured was truly amazing! And I remember falling in love with the Bolex 16mm camera, taking Professor Morin's Experimental Cinema course. I think it was that class which had a deep impact on my life today, and it was the most amazing yet most challenging class I took in the production area of the department. I really loved the rigorous character of the department, its special combination of theory and production, and the openness for new ideas, new projects and experimentation.