| 7:30 p.m. | Program 1 Joan Jonas (U.S., 1971-80) |
When you look into a mirror it returns your mirror image, a virtual reversal; when you look into a video camera, the corresponding image is “true,” not a reproduction in reverse. In Left Side Right Side, Jonas exploits this not-so-simple phenomenon as an apt metaphor for the subdivisions of identity. Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy, the first Jonas performance to utilize video, shares a similar visual device in which the artist and her alter ego, Organic Honey, drift through an ambiguous space where assumed identities are muddled by reflections and reversals. The first inklings of narrative appear in I Want to Live in the Country (and Other Romances), a conglomeration of journal quotes, the landscape of Nova Scotia, and artful sequences assembled in a TV studio, where the space of reverie is resonantly established. Recorded in the Berkeley Art Museum, Upsidedown and Backwards recounts two fairy tales—The Frog Prince and The Boy Who Went Out to Learn Fear—one reversed and intercut with the other. Intermixed with Jonas’s ritualistic actions and objects, they are transformed into a cautionary of desire and loss.
—Steve Seid
• Left Side Right Side (1972, 8:50 mins, B&W). Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (1971, 17:24 mins, B&W). I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances) (1976, 24 mins, Color). Upsidedown and Backwards (1980, 29 mins, Color, PFA Collection)
• (Total running time: 79 mins, 3/4” Video, From Electronic Arts Intermix, unless otherwise noted)
