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Into The Light 		(spacer)
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Into The Light

Artists in the Exhibition


Joan Jonas (American, born 1936)
Mirage, 1976/2001

Mirage is one of Joan Jonas's classic performances of the 1970s, which combined film, video, performance, objects, and drawing. Jonas used all these materials to redefine the parameters of both sculpture and film.

With another performer, she created a series of actions using props, including masks, audiotapes, and a long metal cone. Inspired by film footage of Haitian ritual sand drawings, Jonas drew a series of symbolic sketches on a blackboard, erasing each one before the next was sketched, to create a "magical" sentence.

This presentation of Mirage includes the moving image elements from the original performance at Anthology Film Archives, New York, the original film of Jonas's drawing actions and a vertical roll sequence shot by Babette Mangolte. It also incorporates two videos-Good Night, Good Morning and May Windows-screened during the performance and additional video footage from the same period. These elements create a projective environment whose energy evokes the spirit of the original performance through fragments of recorded actions.


About Joan Jonas
Born in 1936, New York, New York
Lives in New York, New York

Pioneer and now professor of video and performance art, Joan Jonas is an innovator in sculpture, art history, and dance. She first came to be known for her work in performance in the 1960s and the early 1970s when she incorporated a live video camera and monitor into performances. She has worked with numerous composers to create collaborative performance video art. Her single-channel videotapes are concerned mostly with the structural and performative nature of the medium. Jonas said, "Space was always a primary concern, and in considering the space of the monitor I then dealt with the box-like structure, positioning it in relation to myself. I tried to climb into the box, attempting to turn the illusion of flatness into one of depth."


Page 15 of 16 | On the next page: Simone Forti (American, born Italy, 1935)
Holography by Lloyd Cross
Striding Crawling, 1977