FIVARS Interviews City of Ladies Director Kim Noce

We asked artist Kim Noce about her 360 animated work City of Ladies (You), screening at FIVARS in FALL 2021.

FIVARS: What lead to the creation of this piece?

I developed the idea during lockdown while being on the vulnerable list and I had not left my apartment, even for shopping. Like everyone, I found coping mechanisms. I started reading about past pandemics. The Black Death resulted in a shift in the worldview of people in 1400 Italy and led to the Renaissance, allowing new individual voices to come to the forefront and a deeper social responsibility developing across Europe. The Spanish flu led to free health care. These changes started with self-discovery and the importance of individual voices being courageous in saying what they believed in, even if it was against the norm. To feel a new way, sensing a new future.

The film is inspired by the life and writing of Christine de Pizan (1364–1430). Christine lived through the year of the Black Death epidemic, losing her husband and father. To survive, she became the first woman and mother in Europe to support herself by writing. Christine wrote in many different literary forms on a wide range of topics, including debates about equality and justice that are still discussed today.

FIVARS: What was the production process for you and your team? What did you learn?

Following the structure of the “Book of the City of Ladies”, I created a short animated film to explore the question Christine asks. I interviewed people from different social strata, cultures, and life journeys; expressing their view of a new world today. A view that comes from their inner self. I received over 50 recordings. I could not include all their voices, but they are all beautiful, intriguing, wise, and a window into their personal hopes. View all the participants’ contributions to the project. Through the participation process, I hoped to create a collective voice of a snippet of today’s wishes for humanity.

Visually, I captured the slowness and solitude of the confined environment of “a traditional under the camera animation set up” as a 360 portrait of myself painting and animating. The process, the location, and the time to make the film are for me as important as the final result; and it is incorporated into the film. The act of making, thinking, and feeling through time. The film is created in 2 mediums: one in traditional flat screen and the other in 360 monoscopic. The film has a total of three versions, one flat-screen version, and two 360 versions. Each version captures a different stage of the process of thinking, making, watching, and feeling.

FIVARS: How did you become an immersive media content creator and why?

I am becoming an immersive media content creator because it is ultimately what I have started with which was a fine art installation. So it is almost like going back to it just through a different medium.