Jesse Jagtiani ARTIST
VIDEO WORK

An American Tale II is the second video of a video series that the artist started in 2008. Every four years on the Presidential Election Day she goes in the streets to capture the Zeitgeist of the present time. In 2008 the artist was filming in Boston, in 2012 she was traveling the streets of New York City, from district to district and pole to pole. The artist asked the people she met what their biggest fear is, what their greatest wish is, and what they expect to come after the election.



That Trinket i Treasure presents memories of a fieldtrip, the search for yesterday, and the longing for moments of the past.

System Error is a collaborative video performance with new media artist Melissa Boyajian. The video consists of six different personas in which each character acts as a symbol for different sectors of western society. The personas begin in a vacuous black box slowly performing their individual mechanized tasks leaving behind an accumulation of traces of their work. It presents an Orwellianesque cacophony of workaday existence, media frenzy and surveillance.

I’m Telling’ the Truth, Babe, a three-channel video installation, explores the psychological and personal identity-search of the individual, which relates to self-image, self-esteem, and individuation. The artist splits into three alter egos. The character in the middle projection moves through individual spaces where she meets her doppelganger over and over. The artist synthesizes her face with those of others, who then speak through the artist’s body.

An American Tale is a video collage created from snippets of words, phrases and images from interviews with voter, which the artist collected at various pole locations in Boston on the United States Presidential Election Day 2008. The work is an examination of social identity, investigating the community during a time of historical change. It also explores the phenomenon of a national united lexicon.


Time Flies is a two-channel video that displays three performances, which took place in the Boston area, documented with two hidden cameras. It locates a character with a mask in an urban context. A vertical split screen represents the main characters point of view on the top and a cinematic, narrative strategy on the bottom. The video addresses the isolation of the individual in the structure of our culture as well as issues of surveillance in present-day.

Oh Boy! deals with the confusion, conflicts and struggles which arise from the need to categorize gender and sexual identities in contemporary culture. Furthermore it addresses the rapid development of technology and its unknown outcome in present day.

Paradise depicts little mutant-creatures, created from parts of female and male human body pieces. A children choir accompanies these beings living peacefully together.
