“The importance of realizing that one’s life could be different.” Meet artist Amie Siegel who variously works with film, video, photography, sculpture, painting and installation. “I am extremely invested in the existential quest of figuring things out”, says Siegel, who is known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that trace and perform the undercurrents of systems of value, cultural ownership and image-making. “The world presents itself to us very partially and almost in a psychotic way at times.” “The revealing of what is actually going on; the things that we do not see; the unspoken things or the hidden things; the behind-the-scenes circulation of things that create the structures that determine our environment are extremely interesting to me.” The interview, which took place in Siegel’s studio in Brooklyn, New York, presents several of her video works – especially the multi-channel video installation Asterisms (2021) as one example of Siegel’s sophisticated approach. Siegel also tells how looking at art throughout her life has “changed me and my perspective”. “I think, like many artists, I have always been interested in challenging authority. Whether it is this sort of hegemonic practices that continue in our culture, unquestioned, though they seem absurd on many levels or just manipulative. Like the algorithms of the internet driving behavior for profit gain. People participate in unquestioning ways; it’s incredible.” Amie Siegel was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1974. Recent solo exhibitions include Bloodlines, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2022); The Silence, ArkDes/The Swedish Centre for Architecture & Design, Stockholm (2022); Medium Cool, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2019); In Focus: Amie Siegel – Provenance, Tate St. Ives (2018); Winter, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017); Strata, South London Gallery (2017); Interiors, Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2017), Double Negative, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2016); Ricochet, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016). She has participated in the 34th São Paulo Bienal; 12th Gwangju Biennial; Glasgow International, 5th Auckland Triennial; and the 2008 Whitney Biennial, as well as numerous other group exhibitions. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam and New York film festivals. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Art Institute of Chicago; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Auckland Art Gallery; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Siegel has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, a Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a Smithsonian Artist Fellow and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award recipient. Amie Siegel was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her studio in Brooklyn, New York. The interview was recorded in September 2022.