About this Event
Join us at e-flux on Thursday, June 9 at 7pm for an event celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Harvestworks with a screening of Volcano Saga (1989) by Joan Jonas, and a performance by Justin Allen, a current Harvestworks resident. The program will be followed by a discussion between Harvestworks interim directorIvana Dama, e-flux Performance Curator Sanna Almajedi, and artist Toni Dovewho was a Harvestworks resident in 1989 and 1990. The discussion will lead us through different decades spanned by the 661 total Harvestworks residents and the notable artworks that have been created there.
Program
Joan Jonas, Volcano Saga (1989, 28 minutes)
Searching for new narrative methods, Joan Jonas first developed Volcano Saga in 1985 after visiting Iceland with video artist Steina Vasulka. The performance reinterprets the Laxdæla Saga, a thirteenth-century Icelandic tale centered on a woman and her four dreams. In 1989, Jonas adapted the work into a video featuring Tilda Swinton and Ron Vawter. Throughout the piece, the performers appear superimposed over expansive landscapes that become a presence of their own within the narrative. Jonas partly developed this work at Harvestworks, where she joined as a Studio PASS resident in 1984. This residency gave artists equitable access to professional tools for creating sound and media art for just $4 an hour. Jonas was also featured in TELLUS #21 (1988), Harvestworks' subscription audio cassette magazine that featured many visual artists, promoting them to create sound art.
Justin Allen, Rot (Video and live performance, 17 minutes)
Rot is a lyrical essay on classism, social conformity, and the Black bourgeoisie–performed as an experimental karaoke-based play. This work is part of Allen’s new body of work that combines tap dancing, video, and poetry through the translation of rhythmic movement into language. The project explores how the sounds and patterns of tap dance can be interpreted as onomatopoeic text, appearing as live video captions.
Allen is working with Harvestworks technologist to develop a responsive system that translates live tap rhythms into onomatopoeic phrases in real time. As the performer dances, the video environment generates text-based interpretations of the sounds and rhythms as they occur, creating a dynamic interplay between movement, sound, language, and performance.
About Harvestworks:
Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks has helped generations of artists create new works using technology. Our mission is to support the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new and evolving technologies. Our goals are to create an environment where artists can make work inspired and achieved by electronic media; to create a responsive public context for the appreciation of new work by presenting and disseminating the finished works; to advance the art community’s and the public’s “agenda” for the use of technology in art; and to bring together innovative practitioners from all branches of the arts collaborating in the use of electronic media. We assist with commissions and residencies, production services, education and information programs, and the presentation and distribution of their work.
Biographies
Few artists can claim to have initiated a new form of art. Joan Jonas, however, was crucial to the formation of two—video and performance. Beginning in the late 1960s, Jonas melded diverse influences (ranging from silent film to magic shows) and new technologies (such as portable video cameras and TV monitors) to explore the entanglement of the human body and its recorded image. Working in New York City’s vibrant Soho arts scene, Jonas performed as the character Organic Honey, an exaggerated avatar of femininity. Reflective surfaces would be a key motif throughout the artist’s career. In her influential Mirror Piece works, which she began in 1969, performers carried mirrors that faced an audience who suddenly found themselves confronted with their own image. In recent decades, Jonas has continued to innovate with her complex, multimedia installations addressing themes related to the natural environment. She has continually revisited earlier work, transforming previous pieces and sometimes incorporating them into current projects (Reanimation, for example, includes excerpts from Jonas’s 1974 video Disturbances; Reanimation itself has undergone numerous iterations). Just as a natural ecosystem recycles the old into the new, Jonas’s art creates a dynamic, interconnected ecology that continues to evolve. Jonas has exhibited internationally at major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Documenta, and the Venice Biennale, where she represented the United States in 2015.
Justin Allen works in performance, video, and writing. He has been commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Shed, and ISSUE Project Room, and has received support from Franklin Furnace, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. He received his BA in literary studies from Eugene Lang College at The New School and his MFA in sculpture from Yale School of Art. He is the author of Language Arts(Wendy’s Subway, 2024), an experimental collection of writing across genres.
Toni Dove is an artist based in New York who is a pioneer of interactive cinema, creating hybrid performance and installation art fusing film, game and performance. Performers or viewers activate unfolding narratives using proprietary embodied interface instruments that incorporate technologies such as motion sensing or machine learning to connect with on-screen characters. Dove was the Hirshon Artist/Director in residence at the New School for Social Research in Media Studies 2014/15. She has received numerous grants and awards including support from the Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts. She received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from M.I.T. And a lifetime achievement award from I.D.M.A.a. Dove was appointed to the 2000/2003 Government Advisory Committee on Information Technology and Creativity, National Research Council, USA. Dove was Artist in Residence at Bell Labs E.A.T. Program, and at Pioneerworks Immersive Lab.
The program of sound performances at e-flux is curated by Sanna Almajedi.
For more information, please contact [email protected].
Accessibility
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
–For elevator access, please RSVP to [email protected]. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
e-flux, 172 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn, United States
USD 18.00
