Joan Jonas explains her art and performances | LIVE ART #2 - Venice Biennale, 2015

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I don't expect anything from the viewer if it was me as a viewer I would sit down and look at somebody's video in order to understand the piece I mean you can't just walk through and understand the piece you have to sit and look at the videos of course people don't sit through I can't tell everybody to do that but in order to understand my work yes you have to sit through it's like looking at a film you have to look at it it's there of course I have a lot of associations and ideas I don't know if people will get all that I can't I have no control over that I think everybody brings their own knowledge and set of associations to the work children John Jonas is an artist's artist in other words an artist has a lot of influence on many other artists it's always been like this with John Jonas come on I mean I went to see your doing my first visits to New York in the late 80s early 90s in New York house for then expect because other artists had told me so much about her and it's still the case today it's hard to keep it even ranjana's appetites and since the late sixties the works of John Jonas have brought together numerous disciplines to dissipate in Susan's opinion they can soon as she arrived from Boston she quickly moved to Soho which became this incredible center of the art world in the late 60s so she lived through the evolution of this neighborhood followed it's different transformations while taking part in them in this sense she's like a filter she integrated all these changes into her work also it's important to note that of her work is an open sister Norman is not all tightly sealed it brings together many biographical fragments so many biographical elements but it never falls into pure autobiography rather it's a multiplication of the roles that she plays 68 I moved in to Soho Soho was a community actually at that time because the space was extremely cheap it was all factories no galleries no shops it was also rather empty artists from just beginning to move in then at that time in 68 so that was quite rough but very nice before I move to Soho I was already deeply into the art world and going to shows and then I worked in galleries but when I say I learned in the street I just mean that I went to art school also in the late 50s in Boston and there were no video and no performance of course we were working in clay from the model and drawing I simply stepped across a line in the physical space and to me it wasn't such a big move because I linked all literature a poem could have a structure and filmmaking film I went to see films and the anthology film archive was first of all it was very close and for many years in the 60s and 70s I went there often to look at the history of film and so I was very aware of filmmaking and what what is that to make time-based work so I related all these different forms and techniques and that's what my performance the idea of my performance comes out when the gun is an indoor performance it was taking that indoor performance out to a beach in Long Island and making another translating it into the medium in the film and performing for the camera outdoors it happened that that day was very windy and cold and snowy and so the piece became transformed by that situation but in the indoor performance I had fans blowing certain material that I had in the performance so there was always the idea of I wind in the piece the idea of feminism and women finding a voice was very important for me and so my first video piece the organic honey project dealt with exploring whether or not there is such a thing as female imagery which was something that was being discussed at that time the technology was very simple in those early in early video early porta packs very very simple and anybody could really do it so it was really a huge turn for many artists but beyond that I had always been interested in how to change the space like the mirror pieces and the outdoor pieces are partly about the space of the performance and how the audience perceive the space the structure of the video performances were such that the audience saw a live detail of the performance simultaneously with the live performance because I had a live camera as part of the set and the camera woman in the performance filming my actions and so I had the monitor and the camera as part of my interaction with the technology so it had a profound effect on my work since then I've explored more and more of this layering and also the interaction between performance and the recording of it and the transformation of it into autonomous video works or documents as about oh gosh in organic honey's visual telepathy work from the early seventies her own image is part of the performance I'll play a little bit like a self-portrait but multiplied many times by the camera feeds are [Applause] [Music] [Music] now I think that we created a we all have cameras on our iPhones or smartphones and on smartphones so it's difficult to imagine how difficulties at it and I'll complicated it was about to get your hands on such a camera shop and use it was he denying Suzette's this is genuinely the work of a pioneer out from especially for artists who weren't in the film industry were not used to handling a camera become a home game [Music] there's got you all beat up they often write that Joan Jonas is a new media artist because she used Porter back camera and videos very early on this is not exactly true that in her work there are also many references to history mythology magic monkey alchemy nature mysticism see but just when we think we have grasped the meaning of her work it reveals itself as something even walk on Vestas mirage was influenced by a trip I took to India I came back and I wanted to make something very abstract about abstract elements like black and white light and dark Sun and Moon that was made in 1976 and that involved the projection of a volcanoes erupting it was archival footage that I got so I showed part of that and then there was another film of me making drawings for half an hour so later in 2000 when I was invited to show one of the projections of Murat I went back into the footage that I hadn't used from that period and that video has other content in it I wanted to look back at the 70s because it was an odd time we had Nixon in the White House so it was a very strange political time so I go back into my work sometimes and I include shots of work that I wouldn't have that I felt that I didn't want to show before but now I can show it John drama season young Jonas is an open system for God's yet seem the very beginning her work found its own language I saw as already in the late 60s and early 70s everything was in place he's our time you know that's never been a closed system you should also be found its language the language remain it's open is there a finished part every month of rhythm [Music] and it's not a coincidence that today in the 21st century in our digital era thought the works of John Jonas are still pertinent to so many young artists at advancing I had a daddy in Berlin in the early 80s and I like Berlin very much so when the wall came down and went back to Berlin and stayed for another year I began to work on the project while I was in Berlin and the project was based on a Irish epic poem called Sweeney astray the name became revolted by the thought of known places it's a line from the poem it was translated by Seamus Heaney the poet and I translated the ideas of it to that situation in Berlin in which they were displaced individuals and and people moving across borders and so on I also went to Ireland and recorded video and also took many photographs that became part of the installation and as the story of a man goes mad in battle and flies from place to place so it's about war and about how war drives one crazy how draw the war can drive you mad which it does [Music] if all three [Music] volcano saga is based on an Icelandic saga called lux della saga from the very beginning I was interested in making effects myself in the eighties artist Scott grant to do projects and also they were given grants to edit in TV studios so you went in at night and you edited and you could do all kinds of things that you could never do at home or with your Porter pack or with just simple black-and-white and editing volcano saga has some special effects but not as many the work I'm doing now there are no special effects it's all done in my studio with no technical special effects so that interest me to do that to manipulate the image in my own way I don't special effects or sometimes for me they look that well for me they're too slick and so I like the roughness of I would say the hand it is a grave thought but all of this make underpass [Music] georgeanna have me MOV Don John Jonas poked me a lot about her frequent visits to Canada Canada which were very important to her the fact that she doesn't only observe transformations in nature but integrates them into her work he's linked to the attention she pays to landscapes that I'm sure he doesn't only have to do with extinction in a sense of losing entire species it also has to do with the extinction of cultural phenomena the extinction of languages of handwriting but never changing the beat was the Iron Horse an ancient symbol or no veteran room with Helen another symbol calm handwriting tends to disappear in the digital age even if new possibilities present themselves to a literature or plastic arts numeric art has incredible potential man it's not all negative but the question of extinction remains and if writing disappears then something essential to humankind will vanish so Quinta sounds interesting member John Jonas I know writing sketching and drawing always play a very important role it's like there is one true artwork that has been created in the last 50 years you also see here a protest against the extinction of writing in our culture they come to us without a word exists first in the form of an installation [Music] signs of spirits you don't see anything where there's electricity once the power went in they never heard anything move or tap in each of the rooms are two video projections one concerning that subject of concentration the first B's the second fish for water the third kites for wind the fourth the homeroom the other video projections tell fragmented ghost stories which form a continuous narrative linking one room to the next these ghost stories function partly as reference to what remains and what is lost we are haunted the rooms are haunted I'd like to speak about John Jonas in relation to the concept of a total artwork that's the idea that she keeps bringing many elements together in their artistic language she integrates the most diverse new media into her work which gives her art a totally new dimension she being performed she brings literature into her work she brings film performance sculpture as well as installation so dominant all these elements combine into one whole art work not to mention I work with live art performance and time inside I wouldn't say my work was more or less poetic than other people's work but I was involved in developing my own language so I was really interested in moving on from what had been done before I really thought consciously of integrating these different disciplines like drawing the idea of painting film in my work in the video work [Music] I had always been interested in how to change the space and that comes from looking at paintings over you know historically and how painters dealt with the flat surface and then again in the video with the cat video camera I was dealing with the flat surface of the monitor or the projection and how to deal with that space and how the audience perceives his face was so funny how bright it was I said when we were coming out of the barn gee didn't it get bright [Music] the performance I'm doing in Venice which is coming out of the installation in Venice I'm using a lot of some of the footage that I shot in for the for the installation in Venice but not all of it by any means just some of it I'm also again deconstructing those videos and rearranging them and making new performances using the different projections using different techniques of layering for Venice and Jason will play live so then one large difference will be Jason's music accompanying this and that will be anyway Anu and then work Joan comes to see a lot of performance as I do with my band and a lot of the things I think she witnesses is I wouldn't say it's possession but there's a level of a rigor that not only is within the work but is it within the practice you know it's the physicality of this that she also demands on the trunk Jack draw male and female garage door [Music] in the top of the closest trauma common treat creeper below I develop a structure for my work Jason comes and I show him the videos and we go through sequences and he composes music tries out different things and we decide together what works and he also inspires me to move in a certain way I work with sound a lot so being a jazz musician he's very open to me collaborating with him on sound but it's his music of course that we're working with an improvisation is a major part of how we've always worked together like she would start to move I would start to play and then we'd figure out through that process what the music would be for the piece and in a similar way with this one so we would meet we try some things some things would sit well she'd say oh I like that she'd get in front of it in front of the projection and move and then I'd start to move it somewhere else the natural part of my process and I know it's very much a natural part of her process too [Music] [Music] wouldn't there's a moment during the performance that he gets very dense and very you know rocky but mostly dense she's really insanely attracted to those moments and she's always asking for like oh you know I know you're here and you know and I know it looks nice and but don't make it to be sentimental I need you two to dive in there so sometimes we actually try to be moving almost in opposite directions you know something that may be totally beautiful on the screen not to play that but to play something that goes hard against it she asks for that kind of that distance [Music] there's always that element especially in sound and especially in movement in the body dark energizes molecules in another way when the body starts to move what happens to the blood as it circulates quicker through the body you know and sound does the same thing for the mind what is performance mean it's movement I use movement in my work I always have and I move with my body it's not very close to dance it's using a lot of other elements but I've been working in this way for a long time [Music] that's from a transformation is one of the key notions of the 21st century not only social and political but also biological transformation all concepts of transformation and I believe this is very important in her worth as she herself goes through transformation all the time but yes I see but John Jonas describes herself in different contacts in a different geographic role the spectators change rules as well he is very important to her Ethan that's from watching her transform herself I think we ourselves go through a transformation visiting a John John's exhibit is a transformative experience our foul [Music] you

Channel: wocomoCULTURE

Views: 3,758

Rating: 4.9512196 out of 5

Keywords: Art, Jason Moran, visual artist, performance art, video art, New York, mediated images, Mirror Pieces, Wind, Organic Honey, Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy, Lines in the Sand, CPB Films, PLAY_LA_EN, conceptual art, Organic Honey's Vertical roll, feminism, Tilda Swinton

Id: j9vr6Wg9zs0

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020