Joan Jonas (b. 1936)
I Want to Live in the Country (and Other Romances) (1976)
Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances)
Joan Jonas
1976, 24:06 min, color, sound
Loss, displacement, time and memory permeate this haunting nonlinear narrative, which unfolds like a dream in the process of telling itself. Jonas is seen watching video images — shot in a New York studio and in rural Nova Scotia — that metaphorically relate to the dreams, reveries and memories that she is heard reading from her journal. The studio space, which is filled with complex "still life" compositions of archetypal objects, is intercut with Super-8 film footage that nostalgically evokes the quotidian rhythm of the country — the pastoral Nova Scotia landscape, the ocean, a farmhouse. Throughout, Jonas constructs a layered formal structure of time and space, a theater of mediation that reveals frames within frames, monitors within monitors. The poetic journal text and images represent conscious memory; I Want to Live in the Country is a story of the unconscious. -- EAI
With: Ellen McElduff. Editor: John J. Godfrey. Produced by the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen.
This title is available for exhibitions, screenings, and institutional use through Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY. Please visit the EAI Online Catalogue for further information about this artist and work. The EAI site offers extensive resources for curators, students, artists and educators, including: an in-depth guide to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving media art; A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online, a collection of essays, primary documents, and media charting EAI's 40-year history and the early years of the emergent video art scene; and expanded contextual and educational materials.
RESOURCES:
Joan Jonas in UbuWeb Sound
Joan Jonas
1976, 24:06 min, color, sound
Loss, displacement, time and memory permeate this haunting nonlinear narrative, which unfolds like a dream in the process of telling itself. Jonas is seen watching video images — shot in a New York studio and in rural Nova Scotia — that metaphorically relate to the dreams, reveries and memories that she is heard reading from her journal. The studio space, which is filled with complex "still life" compositions of archetypal objects, is intercut with Super-8 film footage that nostalgically evokes the quotidian rhythm of the country — the pastoral Nova Scotia landscape, the ocean, a farmhouse. Throughout, Jonas constructs a layered formal structure of time and space, a theater of mediation that reveals frames within frames, monitors within monitors. The poetic journal text and images represent conscious memory; I Want to Live in the Country is a story of the unconscious. -- EAI
With: Ellen McElduff. Editor: John J. Godfrey. Produced by the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen.
This title is available for exhibitions, screenings, and institutional use through Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY. Please visit the EAI Online Catalogue for further information about this artist and work. The EAI site offers extensive resources for curators, students, artists and educators, including: an in-depth guide to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving media art; A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online, a collection of essays, primary documents, and media charting EAI's 40-year history and the early years of the emergent video art scene; and expanded contextual and educational materials.
RESOURCES:
Joan Jonas in UbuWeb Sound