In conjunction with the exhibition Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning, the artist joins us for a screening of videos from her work They Come to Us Without a Word, which represented the United States at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Organized around Jonas’s long standing themes of bees, fish, mirrors, and wind, the videos in this work comprise fragments of ghost stories inspired by the oral traditions of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. To make the videos, Jonas worked with children who performed against a video backdrop, largely of landscapes from Cape Breton where Jonas has partially lived and worked since 1970. Alongside these videos, Jonas will present excerpts that express the artist's longstanding interest in the natural world and the impact of humans on vulnerable ecosystems. Following the screening, Jonas will be in conversation with curator, and scholar Chus Martínez.
Program
They Come to Us without a Word [“*Bees Ghost Story, Part I*”]. 2015. USA. 6:15 min.
Mirage II (excerpt). 1976/2000. Video (black and white, sound), 30:53 min.
They Come to Us without a Word [“Ocean Final”]. 2015. USA. 4:09 min.
To Touch Sound [Part I]. 2024. 11:42 min.
They Come to Us without a Word [“Mirror Room Projection”] (excerpt). 2015. USA. 21:42 min.
Glass Puzzle (excerpt). 1973. Video (black and white, sound), 17:27 min.
They Come to Us without a Word [“*Wind Ghost Story, Part III*”]. 2015. USA. 3:56 min.
Wind. 1968. 16mm film transferred to HD video (black and white, silent), 5:37 min.
They Come to Us without a Word [“*Homeroom Sequence*”]. 2015. USA. 3:52 min.
Volcano Saga (excerpt). 1989. Video (color, sound). 28:30 min.