Miranda July in “Friends & Strangers”

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Holding a spool of ribbon, footsteps drumming a steady beat on the sidewalks of Los Angeles, artist Miranda July makes her way to a gas station. The artist asks commuters passing through to participate in a performance, handing them a section of ribbon to hold until they need to leave, gradually spinning a loose web connecting these disparate individuals. “My great hope was that, through my work, I could have intimacy with other people,” says July, and this drive to find intimacy, friendship, and family has become the subject of much of her work. July began making performances at a young age, writing and directing her first play as a teenager based on her correspondence with a man in prison, which was called The Lifers (1992). Years later, the artist began Joanie 4 Jackie, a chain letter of films made by women filmmakers that provided her with a community from which to develop as a filmmaker herself. The project continued from 1995 to 2005 when July premiered her first feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), which she directed and starred in. 

In early performances, the artist frequently had to fight to be recognized and respected on stage, but as her films gained popularity, her need to insist on her right to be there diminished. In light of this, July found new ways to bring risk and vulnerability to her performances by asking her audiences to participate. In Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About (2006), the artist calls upon the audience to act in the lead roles of the performance. Since then, July has continued to ask a lot of her collaborators and only works with those willing to rise to the challenge. In 2020, the artist met Jay Benedicto, a telemarketer from Dulag, Philippines, and the two embarked on a collaborative project. July sent Benedicto prompts for photographs, and she would respond with material July would leave as is or collage together with elements from Benedicto’s Facebook page or their conversations. The collaboration appeared in a special issue of Süddeutsche Zeitung and was later published as a stand-alone book titled Services (2020). “That’s part of the risk thing,” says July. “Literally anything is possible in the moment. It is kind of like being in a dream or something, but a shared dream.”

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