Conversation with Andrea Bowers, Los Angeles, 2002

In her studio, Andrea Bowers speaks in front of her video work based on the game Dance Dance Revolution. She compares this interactive, pedestrian dance form to modern dance, as seen in Judson Dance Theater performances, emphasizing its repetitive nature. She describes coming across the video game in areas like the Inland Empire, where it allows kids with low social status to express themselves.

Bowers flips through a scrapbook, which she describes as a constellation of her work, research, and other “artists who I wanted to remember in some way, or whose work had a relationship to mine.” She refers to painter Sylvia Mangold, who transformed confined rooms into open spaces through mirrors. Bowers is interested in interstitial spaces and reflects on the concept of “in-between spaces” and how many women artists, including Ana Mendieta, felt ungrounded. This notion influences Bowers’ work, which seeks to highlight the contemporary feminist struggle for place and identity, especially in digital spaces. Bowers’ drawings and videos combine personal stories and historical context, while “layering things that need to be remembered. For me, that’s important in how something new comes out of that.” She mentions her video work documenting the memorial of blues singer Bessie Smith.

Andrea Bowers emphasizes the historical oppression of women and “this issue of feminism becoming a dirty word.” She critiques the patriarchal separation of mind and body, stressing the importance of emotions in her work, which she feels are often dismissed as neurotic or manipulative. Writer, theorist, and critic Chris Kraus influences Bowers with her blending of personal narratives and theoretical ideas. She elaborates further: “I’m really interested in this process of imitation. I think male modernism was always about inventing the next new thing. … I’m really studying how, through copying and sampling, like in music, and repetition, there are failures in that … failure is actually sort of against a capitalist model.” This extends to her interest in women musicians as role models and how they have historically used their platforms for political statements. “I’m in the process of developing a large collection of the history of women musicians, and it’s just another history that I don’t think has been given enough attention. … I believe it’s intricately tied to the history of feminism in relation to visual artists, feminist theorists, and feminist activism.”