Joshua McVeigh-Schultz

MFA Candidate in Digital Arts and New Media

Joshua McVeigh- Schultz is a video artist and experimental documentary filmmaker whose work plays between the boundaries of documentary and performative genres. Drawing from a background in linguistic anthropology and media studies, his practice treats moments of social instability and awkwardness as a catalyst for dramatic tension.

His work is informed by a dramatic reading of the clash between various performative masks. In particular, he is seduced by the kinds of ruptures that occur when voices of intimacy interject themselves into more public or professional spaces. He often integrates live calls into his video and performance practice as a way of testing social implications of mobile phone technology. He is currently working towards an MFA at UCSC’s DANM (Digital Arts and New Media) program where he plans to collaborate with improv actors on media projects that explore the vox pop interview and try to re-examine the possibilities of civic engagement.

He also worked and lived in Japan and China and has a master’s degree in Asian studies from UC Berkeley. At Berkeley he developed experimental video projects that explored, among other subjects: performativity in restaurant work, gender and war in relation to bathroom graffiti, and vlogging as a new narrative structure. In an experimental performance piece called Gaijin he explores the tensions between his own sense of self as a foreigner in Japan versus the kinds of stereotypical expectations that Japanese media apply to westerners living in Japan. He also shot a documentary about bilingual speakers in Japan, posing questions about the possibilities of identity transformation through linguistic code-switching.

Integrating research interests in the social sciences, he wrote an MA thesis on identity performance and genres of testimony in a Japanese social networking site. He was closely involved with Berkeley’s Center for New Media and also taught as a graduate student instructor for the film and anthropology departments.

He grew up near Philadelphia and completed a BA in anthropology and media studies at the University of Chicago. In 1998, he studied abroad at Tanzania’s University of Dar Es Salaam and spent two months in the Serengeti studying a group of vervet (monkeys)—an experience that dramatically influenced the way he thinks about human language and communication. Joshua is also an avid learner of languages and enjoys studying Japanese, Chinese, Swahili, and Spanish.

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• Courses:*

  DANM 201

  DANM 210

  DANM 220