Video History Project

People

Jim Duesing

James Duesing lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He has produced a body of work in film and video with live action and animation. He is currently an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

In 1986 he went shopping for a typewriter and ended up buying a computer. This one purchase irrevocably changed his life. He has been making computer animations since 1987.

Linda Dubler from the High Museum in Atlanta describes Duesing's work this way: "He presents a world of phantom relationships in which strange hybrids of animals and humans communicate through fragments of conversations which often sound like bites from forgotten films or television shows..... you could describe his creatures as exemplars of the post modern condition -- but it's hard to say that about a thing that looks like a cross between Mick Jagger and a plucked chicken. Duesing's (works) aren't cautionary tales -- the damage has already been done. They are movies for chaos-seekers -- people who enjoy a laugh on the edge of apocalypse."

James Duesing is featured on Absolut Vodka's web site about the history of experimental animation.

His work is held in collections at The Museum of Modern Art (New York); the Goethe Memorial Museum (Tokyo); the UCLA Film Archive (Los Angeles) and The Israel Museum among others.

He has received numerous awards and grants including Prix Ars Electronica, in Linz, Austria, an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

His work has been exhibited widely in numerous places including: The Sundance Film Festival; PBS; Siggraph; The Berlin Video Festival; MTV; The World Animation Festival; The Southern Circuit; Showtime; The Movie Channel; The Learning Channel; The Stuttgart International Festival of Animation; Shanghai Animation Festival, People's Republic of China; National Film Theater of London (England); Film Forum (New York); the Varna World Animation Festival (Bulgaria); the Hirshhorn Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Hiroshima International Animation Festival (Japan); and the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.

Cite this record

"Jim Duesing." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2023. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/jim-duesing.

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Summary

James Duesing is a Pittsburgh-based filmmaker and an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University; he has produced film and video with live action and animation and has made computer animations since 1987 after buying a computer in 1986. His work is held by MoMA (New York) and the UCLA Film Archive; his awards include Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), an AFI Independent Filmmaker Fellowship and an NEA grant. His work has been exhibited at festivals and venues including Sundance and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Last modified 21 May 2023

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