Apparently Virginia Beach has some things going for it. From what I can tell, the place is ripe with youthful rage and wild-spirited party animals. The whole scene is either obscenely weird or weirdly obscene, and while the boys and girls from the Tidewater are drinking a tripped out Kool-Aid, a talented triangle is capturing it all. Along with Richard Perkins (whom we profiled in Issue #5) and John Sebastian Vitale (who appeared in Issue #7), Josiah Marroquin is the third point in that triangle. Collectively, Perkins, Vitale, and Marroquin form an intensely creative team that is spreading a message of abstract abandon through their films, photos, words, and art. We caught up with the Josiah, the quiet one of the trio, and asked him a few questions.
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Where are you from?
I'm originally from the small town of Goshen, Indiana, [which has] a population of about 50,000. I've also lived in Iowa, Puerto Rico, and finally in 2000, I moved with my parents to Virginia Beach.
How did you get into photography?
My freshman year of college I went back to Indiana and lived in a house with 7 other guys, mostly artists. Having that creative community kind of pushed me to cultivate my creativity. The next year I came back to Virginia and started shooting on a shitty 2MP camera I got for Christmas.
Where do your design sensibilities come from?
I'm a self-taught designer. I started on CS3 making film posters, DVD artwork, and web graphics for filmmakers while I attended school at Regent University as a cinema television major. I guess my influences for design come from my love of the 40s-60s, and the advertising of the time. I also have an obsession with science, space, and technology, so naturally I began mixing the past and the future.
I really like the videos you are doing--they’re high-concept and well put together. How is that going and what projects do you have coming up?
My real passion is filmmaking. It's actually going really well as of this year. I began working with Abraham Vilchez-Moran, who is a Director/Editor and co-founder of Illusive Media, along with Shomi Patwary who is now working for KarmaLoop TV in Manhattan. The majority of my new work is music videos. A couple of weeks ago I went up to NYC to shoot five live sessions during the CMJ Music Festival, and [to] shoot a music video for Sydney Wayser. The live sessions were shot at Degraw Sound in Brooklyn and included The Jezebels, The Luyas, Teen Daze, Daughter, and Indians. These sessions will be out soon on a music blog out of Brooklyn called The Wild Honey Pie. Next month, Abe and I are planning on collaborating with that blog again to shoot another live session with the band Stars.
Your collaborators Richard Perkins and John Sebastian Vitale have gotten some shine of late for all the stuff they are developing. How is it working with those guys? Working on all this stuff has to lead to some funny situations...
Working with Richard and John has definitely been interesting. We all have vastly different aesthetics, which is why I think the work we did together has such a unique look. One of the reasons I love the filmmaking is that it is the most collaborative medium. Richard has a way of expressing youth and capturing the chaos of life. John is a very methodical yet abstract artist. He was mainly the brains behind the concept for Magick Margaritasville.
What was the experience of making Magick Margaritasville like? Do you plan to do any more collaboration with Perkins and Vitale in the near future?
Originally Perkins asked me if I wanted to help shoot this project where half would be shot in HD and the other half on VHS. I met Vitale shortly after that. First day of shooting, I walked into Perkins’ apartment and the floor was covered in sleeping bodies (models), beer cans, and goth wardrobe. We all piled into Vitale's station wagon and drove out to the suburbs of Suffolk. The other locations included a parking lot next to P-town thrift, a Suffolk neighborhood park, and a kids’ baseball diamond. We had some scheduling issues with the cast so day two of shooting ended up happening four or five months later with two new cast members. Perkins, Vitale, and I plan to do another project together in the near future.
What projects do you have coming up in the near future? What are your artistic goals for 2013?
I'm currently working with Charles Rasputin along with Perkins on an art zine in Hampton roads called Haunted In The Daylight. The first edition was released last month at the Fantastic Planet Halloween event. The zine consists of literature, photography, and art from local artists.
Next month I'm going back up to Brooklyn to shoot a live session of the band Stars, for The Wild Honey Pie music blog. We are also in the pre-production phase for more live sessions during South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin Texas. Also, I'm collaborating with Kayce McGehee (music artist) on artwork for her new album that's coming out soon.
Abe and I are working on a sci-fi short film for 2013. I plan to move to San Francisco sometime in 2013 to work with a few friends and focus more on the filmmaking medium.