Associate Professor, Media Arts: The Moving Image, Film Production, Documentary Production

Current research: Cabin Field, a documentary about historical and political change as evidenced on a cotton field in Georgia; Stolen Lives, a documentary about civil rights for people with disabilities.

Bio:

Laura Kissel is a media artist who works in film and the electronic and digital arts. She is also co-founder of the Orphan Film Symposium at the University of South Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Media Arts. Kissel’s documentary work explores issues surrounding landscape use and meaning, the representation of history, and the use of orphan films. She is also an activist and advocate for people with disabilities, and is in preproduction on a documentary about the representation of disability, eugenics and the civil rights struggle. Kissel received her MFA in Radio-TV-Film from Northwestern University in 1999.

Artist Statement:

The media forms that I have used predominantly in the past five years are film and video, and the genre I continue to work within is documentary. I use filmmaking as a mode of inquiry, a way of engaging with the world and exploring questions about culture, memory, and the representation of history. This approach is evident in “Cabin Field,” a documentary about landscape change and perception; “Finding Lula,” an experimental documentary using only found footage to reconstruct a possible history for my great aunt, whom I never knew; and “Vivian’s Beauty Shop,” a short documentary portrait of the customers who frequent a small town beauty parlor.

Increasingly, I find it is no longer sufficient for my work to interpret a place, person, or cultural landscape without creating a strong argument for political and social change. My current documentary in progress, “Stolen Lives,” actively engages contemporary political and social issues surrounding civil rights for people with disabilities. It merges a contemplative and evocative style of shooting, the recovery and reuse of orphan films, and the goal of political change.