Vertical Roll is a 1972 video art piece by American video and performance artist Joan Jonas. It is a sequel to Jonas' first video work Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy. Jonas' interfacing with the material grammar of video was significant to the late 1960s and early 1970s experimentation with new video technology. Among others, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Nam June Paik and Peter Campus also contributed to the emergent material discourse of video art.
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Transcription
["Joan Jonas: New York Performances"] Growing up in New York, I was very lucky to be living near museums. I remember going to MoMA and going to the Metropolitan Museum, and I remember the first time I ever went to the opera. It was a Wagner opera. I went with my mother, and I remember I had toys that I was playing with. I just remember the valkyrie-- the women dressed in armor. Big women with horns on their head. Then later when I was a little bit older, for instance, I was lucky enough to see a Balanchine piece: "Afternoon of a Faun" with Tanaquil Le Clercq. You know, things like that make a big impression on you when you're young. ["Organic Honey's Vertical Roll" (1973)] I wanted to develop my own language, and the minute I started performing, I began to invent in a different way-- through my body movements, through... "How do I use music, sound, and three-dimensional space?" I was very interested in film and how to translate my work into another medium so that it would not disappear. My first film, it came from an indoor performance-- my first performance at... it was at Saint Peter's Church, actually. We decided to film it outdoors; I wanted to put it outdoors. ["Wind" (1968)] And it was just coincidence--it was the coldest, windiest day of the year in the Long Island Sound, right on the beach. It was very, very difficult. It was really freezing. I went there with a group of young artists who were my friends and we worked together. Judy Padow, Eve Corey, Keith Hollingworth... they were the performers. I was in it, too. Peter Campus did the camera, and then we edited it together. [Songdelay by Joan Jonas] ["Songdelay" (1973)] [sound of two blocks being clapped against each other] [sound of a ship's horn] In some of my pieces there are other artists, like the outdoor piece, "Songdelay". The people in that little group was Gordon Matta-Clark, and Carol Gooden, and Tina Girouard, and Steve Paxton, and Penelope. [sound of two blocks being clapped against each other, delayed from the visuals] I'd set it up and give them all kinds of props and objects or tasks. For instance, Gordon and Carol just painted a circle and a line. That's what they did. And then they walked back and forth with a stick. Penelope, I gave her the sticks to play with and she stuck them in her pants and did a little dance. So, people both followed directions and then they played with the objects. So it was very playful and people had more time, and I'd say it was a more relaxed, kind of, atmosphere. In a way, we all helped each other and worked together, and people really enjoyed being in other people's works. You know, everybody had time to do that. In the Sixties and Seventies, it was comparatively easy to do a work outdoors. You didn't have to get permission--you could just go there. And there was many interesting sites, like the place where I performed "Songdelay". I first did it at Jones Beach, but then brought it to Chambers and the West Side, right on the river. And the piers were still there. It was beautiful! [sound of a ship's horn] So that's all gone now. You can't do that anymore. ["Street Scene" (1976)] [sounds of people singing in the streets] Then another time later in 1976, I went down at night with Pat Steir and Andy Mann, and we just improvised for the camera in the streets--in Wall Street. You can't do that anymore, either. You know, so that whole playfulness is gone. It's not something I do so easily anymore. I had to write to the New York Times to say, you know, "No one's ever reviewed my work." People didn't know how to write about it. And then the guy came to every performance, but that was only at that moment, you know. Everybody knew that that moment was special, in the Sixties and Seventies. It was a special moment. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it was just a special moment. ["Joan Jonas Dances As Organic Honey, Fictional Woman"] Now, young artists in other places are doing the same. Of course, they always will be. So maybe in Brooklyn, or the Midwest, or Chicago, that this kind of work is going on, for sure. But New York is not so exciting to use. There's not so many empty lots or places.
The video
Shot in Ace Gallery Los Angeles, Vertical Roll features Jonas performing a series of actions under her alter-ego Organic Honey, the belly dancer.[1] The video was shot during one of the rehearsals for Jonas' Organic Honey performance, and while it is mostly based on the structure of a vertical roll it does contain some images from Visual Telepathy.[2] To Jonas the video offered a new means to approach perception and offer "multiple and simultaneous points of view".[2] Vertical Roll provided Jonas a means to explore the disjunction between performance and a recording of that performance. She places a heavy emphasis on time, and both physical and mental space in her explanation of the work.
The Vertical Roll
Vertical Roll combines both video and the performance space. As an installation alongside the Organic Honey performance it makes use of both live action and recorded video.[3] The performance, on and off camera, plays on the disjunction between the two modes of presentation. Jonas' intentional mediation of "the monitor's receiving and transmitting frequencies"[4] causes the image being displayed to repeatedly travel vertically from the bottom of the screen to the top resulting in the "vertical roll" for which the piece is titled. The vertical roll, in and of itself, is one "of the primary technical features of video".[5] Jonas' manipulation of the vertical hold function on a CRT monitor to mimic the vertical movement of film through a projector, placing the piece in clear dialog with the cinematic tradition.[6] This dialog is seen in Jonas' technical handling of the video in which video "shifts have to become registered either by camera movement... or by cutting".[7]
Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but consistently unequal roles of women. The Organic Honey videos showcased Jonas' early exploration into "the narcissistic qualities of video"[8] and would later provide the foundation for proceeding video works. The camera gazes at Jonas, implicating the viewer in the work and further, with her body. Jonas presents her collection of images through multiple perspectives that are dependent "in terms of the camera's distance and its orientation to horizontal ground".[7] The de-synchronization of the monitor's receiving and transmitting frequencies results in the constant wiping away of the images on screen which renders the images recognizable but gives them the illusion of being invisible. The illusion created is perceptual. it is "one of a continuous dissolve through time and space".[7] Vertical Roll introduces the paradigm of the body existing in a space between the video and the monitor. The monitor becomes a metaphorical stand-in for the reel and this metaphor is only further enhanced through the continuous action of the vertical roll which references the "physical reality of the tape deck".[7] Creating a sense of fragmentation, the vertical roll relentlessly pounds at the images of the artist as she moves through a series of performed identities. Characterized a "disjunctive self portrait" by the Electronic Arts Intermix, the image content of the work is strongly mediated by the mirror-like function of the camera, scrutinized by the lens and subjected to violence by the vertical roll.[9]
De-synchronization
The disparity between the video monitor, the repeating percussive sound, and the on-screen image are examples of the use of de-synchronization as a conceptual tool for revealing the contingency of perceptual experience. This disparity relies on the instability of Jonas' images juxtaposed with their cementation as visible through the use of the video medium.[4] An example of the perceptual confusions created in Jonas' Vertical Roll can be seen in the sequence where "Jonas bangs a spoon against a mirror, creating the illusions of a relationship between the sounds and the image disturbance".[5] Jonas matches action and sound to the timing of the vertical roll [10] which creates the idea of simultaneous occurrences in the video.
Temporality is made a part of Vertical Roll through the disjunctive nature of the video, and this sense of time is "understood as propulsion towards an end."[7] Time is visualized through a constant wiping away of the image. Through de-synchronization, the artist posed a challenge to the supposed objectivity of experience from the senses, potentially uncovering pretenses or dispositions that inform the processing of sensory data.[4] The images on screen seem to decompose in their constant scanning from the bottom to the top of the screen.[7] Jonas further enhances the effects of de-synchronization through her movements which are "choreographed in relation to the action of the vertical roll."[4]
Jonas explores the notion of the frame extensively in Vertical Roll as an expression of “standing one’s ground against external forces.” [6] By recording a CRT playing back video, Jonas creates a frame within a frame, and then creating the image that the frame is collapsing in on itself every half second or so by adjusting the vertical roll on the monitor. While visually excluding the outside world nearly the entire piece, sounds accompanying the crashing frame dictate some kind of external operator attempting to beat along with the CRT’s image, expanding the scope of the piece beyond the video. In the concluding moments of her video Jonas breaks the frame entirely when she inserts her head in between the camera and the monitor, entering from the outer edge of the frame, destroying the symbolic wall the camera creates and adding another level of spatial fragmentation and self-reflection.[11] The introduction of Jonas' head is an act of agency independent of the vertical roll. It renders the vertical roll visible and reveals the space of the video to the viewer,[5] shattering its perceptual illusion. The disjunction caused by the concluding moments of this video highlights the implications of video presented, or displayed, in the space of the monitor.[10]
Jonas claims that Vertical Roll finds a likeness to The Garden of Forking Paths a work by Jorge Luis Borges.[2]
References
- ^ "Joan Jonas: Vertical Roll", The University of Utah, Accessed 04-26-2015.
- ^ a b c Finklepearl, Tom; Jonas, Joan (2003). Joan Jonas:five works. Queens Museum of Art: University of Michigan. p. 10.
- ^ John G. Hanhardt, "From Screen to Gallery: Cinema, Video and Installation Art Practices" in "American Art" Vol 22, No. 2., (The University of Chicago Press, Summer 2008), Accessed 27-04-2015
- ^ a b c d Crimp, Douglas (1982). "De-Synchronization in Joan Jonas's Performances'". Sloan Jonas: Scripts and Descriptions. University of California, Berkeley. p. 9.
- ^ a b c Crimp, Douglas (1982). "De-Synchronization in Joan Jonas's Performances'". Sloan Jonas: Scripts and Descriptions. University of California, Berkeley. p. 130.
- ^ a b Martin Kremer, "Get rid of the Knots" in Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry, Issue 9 (Spring/Summer 2004), The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, p. 10-19
- ^ a b c d e f Krauss, Rosalind (1976). "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism". October (1): 60–61. doi:10.2307/778507.
- ^ Tom Finklepearl, Joan Jonas, Joan Jonas: Five Works eds. Warren Niesluchowski, Valerie Smith (New York: Queens Museum of Art, 2003), p. 6, Accessed 27-04-2015
- ^ "Vertical Roll" Electronic Arts Intermix, 2013. http://www.eai.org/title.htm?id=2013
- ^ a b Bruce Kurtz, "Video is Being Invented" in "Arts Magazine" (1973), p. 41,Accessed 27-04-2015
- ^ Zippay, Lori (1991). Artists' Video: An International Guide. New York: Electronic Arts Intermix. p. 114.
This page was last edited on 19 September 2021, at 21:21