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M+, Hong Kong, © Joan Jonas/EAI/ARS
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Mediatheque
Joan Jonas 瓊．喬納斯
Disturbances 干擾
1974
In Disturbances, performers carry out a series of choreographed actions shown only through wavering reflections in a pool of water. Clad in flowing white garments, they manipulate textiles in movements that echo the undulating surface of the water. Underwater swimmers occasionally cross the frame, their refracted images layered together with the performers’ reflections. This visual confusion of above and below, actual and reflected, points to Joan Jonas’s larger interest in the mediating qualities of the moving image. The surface of the water is a resonant metaphor for the medium itself, which can distort what it shows even as it claims to be transparent. Towards the end of the work, Jonas presses these ideas of layering, reflection, and distortion even further, as a ghostly hand enters the frame from behind the camera, disturbing the relationship between the viewer and the space of the image.
In the dynamic art scene of 1960s New York, Jonas was an important pioneer in the development of video art, exploring the formal qualities of video and staging performance artworks with the city as a framing environment. She often cast fellow artists as performers, or else she collaborated with them to film the works. Sculpture and drawing have also been critical to her artistic oeuvre—these mediums form part of a continuum with her time-based performances and video art.
In the dynamic art scene of 1960s New York, Jonas was an important pioneer in the development of video art, exploring the formal qualities of video and staging performance artworks with the city as a framing environment. She often cast fellow artists as performers, or else she collaborated with them to film the works. Sculpture and drawing have also been critical to her artistic oeuvre—these mediums form part of a continuum with her time-based performances and video art.
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