Signe Baumane is a Latvian artist currently living and working in New York City. She wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of eight, and since then has fostered a talent for storytelling that permeates her whimsical, often risque, and highly humorous animated films. She is a core member of Square Footage Films, a New York-based group of independent animators that self-publishes and self-distributes their work. From 2000 to 2002, she taught animation at Pratt Institute, and is periodically publishing parts of a novel about her adventures in New York in Una, a Latvian women's magazine. In 2005, she was awarded a Film Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as an individual artist grant from The Jerome Foundation

What initially drew you to the language of comics? How would you characterize your particular approach to the form?

SB: I am not a formally trained artist, and my road to comics was not very straight. I studied Philosophy, then I went into animation, then I did illustration work, and then I turned to comics. But I have to say one informed the other. I'm interested in visually expressing complicated concepts, and I'm fascinated by the relationship between text and pictures—they don't have to support each other. In fact, it is more interesting when the visuals stray off from the text and give additional information that is not already there.

Though you have lived in New York since 1995, how has your experience growing up in Latvia influenced your practice?

SB: I grew up in a small country illegally annexed by the Soviet Union. All the small Eastern European countries under the Soviet power had a very strong illustration and comic tradition. Some of the Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian illustrators, comic, and poster artists were the best I've ever seen. They combined surrealism with political critique, with philosophical metaphors, with precise observations of every day life. The amazement created by that kind of approach to artwork still follows me.

Most of your work engages moving images—film and animation. Did you approach the illustration and writing for this comic differently than your work in film?

SB: Well, yes. In animation, things move from one into another. In a comic strip you sort of cut from drawing to drawing. Since the strip had strong limitations—only nine windows—and I normally have very complex ideas to express, I really had to focus on how to say the complicated things simply and make it clear to the audience. I am not sure if I succeeded completely. That's another difference between animation and comic strips: you can watch your animated film with an audience and judge whether or not you succeeded by their reaction, but with a comic strip, people read it on their own while you cry in a dark corner, neglected.

What inspired you to make a comic taking on climate change and species extinction, and why did you choose to engage these topics in this particular way?

SB: I live in a rent-stabilized apartment with a roommate, and a few years ago, after the building changed hands, the building landlord sued us. Of course they want to get us out—we are paying less than the apartment is worth! But of course we want to stay—I can only afford to be an artist in New York because I live in this rent-stabilized apartment! So it goes back and forth, from court to DHCR to our lawyers to the landlord's lawyers and around again, and from time to time it gets upsetting, especially when I read the lies and distorted facts the landlord's lawyer presents to our lawyer. I also find it ironic that here we are scrambling and fighting and stomping the ground on this little rock we call Manhattan, while the ice caps are slowly and inevitably melting. Soon our little rock might go underwater and there won't be any apartments left to fight about. We'll all be evicted—and I mean humankind on the Earth—because we've been spoiled rotten with life made easy by electricity and iPods. We'll go extinct like thousands of species before us.

You also studied Philosophy at the Moscow University—do you feel that this education comes into play in your work as a visual artist?

SB: Definitely. But since I am not a practicing philosopher, art is the only means by which I can express my views. Images become my symbols and metaphors, although true philosophers condemn metaphors. They say: metaphors only look like abstractions; they are too imprecise to be the tools to describe the world; the only place for a metaphor is in poetry. To me, metaphor is more precise than any mathematical abstraction because it shows the ambiguity of the word and its simultaneous multiple meanings.

Can you tell me a little about how you became involved in Square Footage Films, a New York-based group of independent animators that self-publishes and self-distributes their work? How has working with this group dovetailed or departed from your independent practice?

SB: It's a long story. But basically, it all started on a roof of a New York-based animator, Elanna Allen, at a summer party when a bunch of us animators got tipsy and conceived the idea to join forces and self-publish and self-distribute a collection of our work. When we woke up the next day, the idea still seemed worthy. So Pat Smith, Bill Plympton, and I called a meeting. Eleven animators walked into Bill's studio and agreed to pay $200 each to cover the expenses of printing 1,000 DVDs. Each of us in the end received 20 or 50 DVDs, which we either sold to people or gave away to friends and potential clients. We published another volume and then the project sort of stalled. We never made enough money for the money to be the motivation. Distribution is so much work that you have to ask yourself if you are a filmmaker or a distributor. My answer to that question is: I am a filmmaker, so I slip out of this DVD business and get to my worktable to make another film.

I have to say that self-publishing and self-distribution is the pure form of independence. So, it does support your independence as an animator. Working in a group is quite amazing too, because you not only promote your own work but you promote other people's work and you fall in love with that work. It makes you part of something bigger than just your small self. But it still consumes a lot of time, and I have to choose to promote films or make them—and I prefer making films.

Many of your pieces—such as "Birth" (2009), which examines the psychological terror of teenage pregnancy—tackle serious subjects with colorful and humorous imagery. How do you find that balance between absurdity and gravity?

SB: Gravity is absurd and absurdity has gravity. A story drives me, and I never know if it is funny or serious or what. I just want to tell the story and get some reaction from the audience. The story is what I am interested in and laughter is a nice byproduct. But, I never aspire to make a comedy or tragedy. Maybe that is my tragedy—that I don't define the genre I work in?

The subject of female sexuality seems to be a running theme in your oeuvre as both an illustrator and filmmaker. Specifically, "Teat Beat" (2007), a collection of one-minute animated shorts on sex from a woman's point of view, addresses the subject with a kind of in your face, brash wittiness. What drew you to focusing so much on sexuality, and what have you found to be exciting or challenging about taking on such a complex aspect of humanity?

SB: It might be explained through my mental or emotional deficiency, or through the way my body functions. I can never not think about sex. It's always there—either like a burning need or as a freshly fulfilled gratification. My need for sex is pretty physical, not psychological, like some women who just like to be hugged and sex for them is the way to get to the hugging part. So, if I am thinking about it so constantly, so strongly, why can't I talk about it?

But, I didn't start out making films about sex. Around 1996, I made a series of erotic paintings, and I don't know why I made them. The idea to make an animated film about sex grew from those paintings. Each film, of course, came out from a different source of inspiration and reasoning. "Love Story" was based on a dream of a friend. He fought an alligator in that dream and I thought fighting an alligator made a pretty powerful image—an image loaded with meaning (alligators represent the primitive, instinctual side of one's sexuality). In "Five Fucking Fables" I just let my subconscious roam. I didn't have a plan or storyboard for the film; it was pure fun. "Natasha" was collaboration with a friend; we didn't set out to do a sex film but that's where it ended. "Teat Beat of Sex" was inspired by misconceptions on sex.

On the one hand, I do understand why talking about sex has been such a taboo in our society. Sex is a powerful drug; it has to be used responsibly. On the other hand, I don't understand why talking about sex is a taboo. To master something, you have to learn about it. To learn, you have to talk about it. So, I'm coming from simultaneously understanding and not understanding society's squeamish attitude towards sex.

What bothers me is that, because of commercials and TV shows, we are made to believe that a certain kind of look or behavior is sexy. But when you just stop and think about it, that kind of look or behavior is actually undermining your true individual sexuality. We are not porno stars—we are real women. We don't want to pretend that we have orgasms—we want to have them. How about that for a United Nations speech?

What are the issues facing us today that you're most interested in, concerned about, or motivated by as an artist? What should we be paying attention to?

SB: I'm quite concerned about the influence of mass media on the way people think. It's like we are formed into uniformed colorless blobs so that we can be sold more and more of the same crap. But the good thing is that there is a stream of people trying to escape that uniformity of TV and Hollywood. There are thousands of small film festivals showing small, independent films and there is a growing audience for it. Still, when I look around, I see young people more interested in buying a new gadget (iPad!) or another pair of cool shoes than fostering their individuality. Creativity or individuality just doesn't have a good market value. But, I do have a hope! I do! I do. I do?