JOHN ZIEMAN - Video Artist

Video Artist & Music Composer JOHN ZIEMAN (b. Boston, 1957) creates large-format multi-channel video installations, and single channel works.

Boston’s ICA 1980 — NYC’s Lincoln Center 2003

In 1980 he creatively helmed a multi-monitor live event at Boston’s ICA featuring his custom-built video synthesizer, 7 cameras, live music & performance.

Moving to NYC in 1980, John Zieman started a several-years collaboration with Nam June Paik, editing and creating footage with John’s synthesizer . Their work together culminated with Nam June sending John on a lecture tour to Kunst Academie, Dusseldorf and the American Center, Paris, sharing the his work, and reflections upon the creative explosion in NYC, as Video Art met the new energy of Music Video.

After meeting feminist video artist Dara Birnbaum in 1981, they began a four-decades-plus collaboration and friendship, with Zieman credited on many of her works.

In 1982, Zieman’s early work THREAT (1978) with his electronic sound score, was shown at Anthology Film Archives.

MFA Boston — NYC’s Lincoln Center 2003

His 1986 solo work PORTRAIT OF A STATE OF MIND, with his music, premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In 1995, Diane Keaton commissioned Zieman to compose music for her feature film HEAVEN.

In 2003 Zieman created HYSTERICAL MUSIC for composer Nico Muhly and OCEANA for composer Paola Prestini; 2 video art works that were projected onstage above the live orchestra for Lincoln Center’s concert series “VIA”, and toured nationally.

TIME SUITE SERIES — Latest Immersive Installations

Zieman premiered TIME SUITE (2008), with cinema projection installation, as a special guest of the DIVA Fair & Bridge Art Fair. This first work of his 3 part TIME SUITE SERIES, was followed by 2009’s FIRST DREAM, which premiered at the Chelsea Art Museum.

2010’s TS3D, (Time Suite 3, in 3-D) showed in Stereoscopic 3-D at London’s Cynthia Corbett Gallery, and in theaters with the BEFILM 3D film festival. These 3 works all shared Zieman’s novel technique – projecting his animated type designs — literally moving light — onto the body, and then captured cinematically as a layered portrait. Shown together in 2011, THE TIME SUITE SERIES became Zieman’s first solo show at White Box NYC.

Zieman’s installation/music composition WEAPONIZED BEAUTY (2014) features a triptych; 3-channels of HD video, strategically overwhelming the viewer’s peripheral vision. It premiered at

White Box NYC. His newest work, 2025’s OTOH (ON THE ONE HAND) further explores perception overload, w 2 channels of 4K imagery, and Zieman’s full sound score.

Selected Works

Weaponized Beauty

A gentle meditation on “the difficulties challenging traditional beauty in the post-modern era”, this immersive video installation strategically overwhelms the viewer’s eye from 3 sides, filling their peripheral vision.

Time Suite 3-D

There is no way to experience the impact of this work, without wearing 3-D glasses. Every frame of the program is composed featuring depth perception; each has a separate left eye and right eye file. Viewers put on the 3D glasses and are transported in a visceral way.

Mouseyfesto

MOUSEYFESTO (2015) (HD, Stereo) Exhibited as a sculpture, featuring a video monitor inside a cork plinth, also exhibited as a single channel HD.

En Plein Air

John Zieman shot & edited this 4K video art piece, toward the end of Covid isolation. Lensed entirely in the East End of Long Island, using the Sony FX6 electronic cinema camera.

The music is by composer John Petersen, whose meditative sound work can be explored at experiencejourneybox.com.

Please don’t watch it on your phone or tiny screen. Watch it on your biggest screen.

To see it in 4K, you need a 4K resolution monitor, CLICK ON THE GEAR symbol on the bottom right, set it to 4K, then CLICK THE FULL SCREEN button next to it (with four arrows).

First Dream

The second work in Zieman’s TIME SUITE series, “First Dream” presents a floating illusory world, featuring the artist’s text literally projected upon the bodies of the subjects, both human and otherworldly.

Klaus Nomi “Simple Man”

Zieman directed & edited this music video in ’81 for Klaus Nomi, a performance artist with an unusual operatic-style soprano voice, well-loved in Berlin and Downtown NYC, still revered as a cult legend today. Here he demonstrates his early subtle mastery of video feedback, softly flowering titles and fog-like ghosting at the end.

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