Filmmaker, artist, and writer Miranda July, is known for her off beat and independent short films and performance art. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and in two Whitney Biennials. In 2005, July starred in and directed her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. She published her first collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You in 2007. Of her work, Karen Durbin of The New York Times wrote: “At her most unnerving, Ms. July upends the rocklike surface of social norms to show us the creepy, crawly bits we keep hidden underneath. But more than anything, her fearless, often playful output suggests the freewheeling creativity of a child – an enviable quality that seldom survives.” Miranda July’s newest film, The Future, is the story of a couple whose lives and perspectives change radically after adopting a stray cat.
Julia Bryan-Wilson is associate professor in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley, where she teaches courses on contemporary art and feminist/queer theory. She is the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (2009), and is a frequent contributor to Artforum magazine.