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Talking Together - Jess Loseby & Tara Noid - Constructing Identity
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Talking with me is a much more direct way of communicating than showing people your work on the net.

One-to-one is fine, and e-mail is fine, but ironically phones, I cant do phones - it's this being understood you know - it is very important to me and - it is baggage - but hey we all have it.

Are you interested in constructing a net identity for yourself?

Very early on someone said to me, "You need to get rid of the name Jess Loseby, it's a nice family name, but it is not a net-artist's name". Net names are always very cool. I thought that this was a tempting opportunity to re-name and re-brand myself. I could be someone really different; put down one life and pick up another...I thought no, I can't do that; the things that interest me, the things that I am communicating are to do with me and they won't have to do with this lady standing next to me. I have no idea what she looks like, I have no idea what her worries are or what her darkness is like; what she likes and what she doesn't and who her friends are. I can't move into that, somehow I can't, I never tried to construct myself. I think one of the guys who reviewed me - said that Jess Loseby is slick - so I reinvented myself somehow - I have never been called slick in my life. I could get used to being called slick.

And you have been called cyber-chick, cool and cut-and-paste-addict.

I wouldn't mind being seen as that but that's just part of dressing in an outfit, like putting your make-up on. I am quiet happy with that - putting the lipstick on. But it won't be swapping bodies. You know what I mean?

But I can see the temptation in constructing identity. I think the closest I have come to it is in "hello". Actually, have you ever seen a dance piece by "dv8" called "Strange Fish"? There is this guy on a party and he can't stop talking, and there is that couple, and they are coming together and they dance together, and each time he comes up to them he is so annoying and they move away, and he keeps talking to them, and when they are kissing, he tries putting his head in like this and then eventually he climbs up on this couple and he puts his head on the girls head and with his feet he pushes them apart and he is horizontal between them - his name was Nigel. It really affected me when I watched it. It felt like you are talking and you can't be heard and you literally

want to get between them and do that, and you know you are being annoying and you know you are driving people nuts and it was that feeling I used when making "hello". I am gonna talk to you, make you wait, sit there and I will go on until you hear - but also I was not giving them an opportunity to respond - yeah and its gonna drive you nuts cause you want to shut this person up - you know - why don't you talk, that's really rude you know, but you can't talk. I am quite interested in dance - I always was.

'Strange Fish' director: David Hinton (Dance Videos)
50 mins © BBC 1992
http://www.dv8.co.uk/film/film.folder.html

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