John Warren

Lecturer of Art

A film/video artist, John Warren explores the lyrical and subjective frontiers of experimental and documentary. He works primarily with a 16mm Bolex motion picture camera to make films and installations that seek to question, to interpret, and to express that which transcends language. A Nashville native, Warren moved to Boston in 1999 where he earned a BFA in Visual & Media Arts from Emerson College. He worked for years as an Emmy-nominated video editor for PBS and MTV before relocating to Los Angeles in 2008 where he earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Warren returned to Nashville in 2013 and began teaching Video Art and Fundamentals of Film/Video Production at Vanderbilt University, where he is currently a Lecturer. He has also taught workshops for underserved public high school students, Girl Scouts, older adults, former military members, and people interested in changing careers. 

Over the past decade, Warren’s work has exhibited internationally in a wide range of museums (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Frist Center for the Visual Arts), festivals (including BFI London Film Festival, Images Festival in Toronto, Scotland’s Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, MARFICI International Independent Film Festival in Argentina, Antimatter Film Festival, Iowa City Documentary Festival, and the touring Black Maria Film Festival), micro-cinemas (New York’s Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco’s Other Cinema, REDCAT, Echo Park Film Center), gallery exhibitions (Amsterdam’s Stichting Raspoetin Gallery, Nashville’s Seed Space, and Vanderbilt University’s Space 204), and non-traditional venues (the exterior of Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, inside Nashville’s Track One warehouse). A recipient of numerous grants and awards, he most recently received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission.