Ilene Segalove: Whatever Happened to the Future?

This interview was conducted by Emily Martin to accompany the VDB TV online program, Ilene Segalove: Whatever Happened to the Future?

One of the early adopters of video on the West Coast, Ilene Segalove expresses an intangible captivation with the televisual medium and a playful approach to the cracks within the quotidian. Segalove’s technicolor work explores the uncertainty of the future, budding pubescent desires, everyday deceptions, and the self reformulated through the television. 

Whatever Happened to MY Future? and Coal Confession tie in together to stir an unresolved story of Segalove’s personal journey and life as an artist, one that she has routinely sought to contextualize with the offerings of the television as an object of desire, medium for exploration, and uncanny mirror. In consideration of her work, Segalove seamlessly weaves together the constructed realities of life, television, and the video camera, differentiating her work from that of her contemporaries.