Joan Jonas "Reanimation"

Wako Works of Art

Finished

Artists

Joan Jonas

Born in 1936 in New York, Joan Jonas studied art history at Mount Holyoke and later sculpture at Columbia University; she was involved in the 1960s and 1970s experimental dance and performance movement, and worked with artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, and Philip Glass. Jonas works in a variety of mediums in various locations: indoor and outdoor performances; videos through monitors, as well as projected and overlaid; drawings in the studio and in performances; photographs and props documenting the performances that have taken place. Through these wide-ranging forms, Jonas makes references to a plethora of sources, from Icelandic folklore ("Volcano Saga", 1985-1989) to H.D and Greek mythology ("Lines in the Sand", 2002), to Aby Warburg ("The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things", 2005) to formulate her own visual narratives.

Inspired by the 1968 novel "Under the Glacier" by Icelandic author Halldór Laxness, "Reanimation" is composed of videos employed in a performance that was first presented at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall of 2010. The performance then incorporated live camera animation method developed for "Reading Dante" (which was presented at the Yokohama Triennale in 2008), and overlaying of her earlier videos such as "Disturbances" (1973) and "Melancholia" (2005), as well as a collage of objects, images and words. The performance was later staged at documenta 13 at Kassel, Germany in 2012, accompanied by live music of jazz pianist Jason Moran and Glacier, new video shot in the Arctic Circle; Jonas also presented installations in the windows of a small house in Karlsaue Park. The single-room installation at Wako Works of Art is deliberated so that the audience will now experience the work from inside.

Schedule

Feb 2 (Sat) 2013-Mar 2 (Sat) 2013