![]() There are more mirrors: small and round, large and triangular, close-up and getting smashed with a hammer. The enigmatic action is periodically accompanied by loud electronic buzzing. She distorts her features by pressing her face to a large glass jar full of water, into which she tosses coins as if it were a lucky fountain. In blurry black and white, Organic Honey stares into a broken mirror, then back at the camera. In her earliest videos, which one comes across quickly in Tate Modern’s ambitious but sometimes frustrating survey (until 5 August), Jonas appears as Organic Honey: a feathered 1930s-style starlet, wearing a close-fitting mask from an erotica store on Manhattan’s 42nd Street. ‘Narcissism’ is not exactly a judgment, more a description of process. Already preoccupied by mirrors and mirroring – Borges was an influence – she turned the Portapak on herself and executed what Rosalind Krauss would later call a ‘weightless fall through the suspended space of narcissism’. Jonas, who at this point had worked mostly in performance and made one short film, realised that the combination of camera, monitor and recorder would allow her to see results straight away in her studio. William Eggleston bought two, stuck fancier lenses on them, and documented the Memphis demi-monde for his film Stranded in Canton. Andy Warhol’s videos of the same year (including a dazed portrait of Edie Sedgwick) were made with a large borrowed Philips camera, but he too began using the smaller and simpler Sony in 1970. It’s said that on its release in 1965 Nam June Paik was the first artist to start using this newly consumer-priced set-up. ![]() In the history of video art, there is no more celebrated piece of kit. J oan Jonas bought her first video camera, a Sony Portapak, also known as the Video Rover, on a trip to Japan in 1970.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |