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Left Side, Right Side (1972)
Directed by Joan Jonas
Documentary · 9m
In this early work, Jonas translates her performance strategies to video, applying the inherent properties of the medium to her investigations of the self and the body. Jonas performs in a direct, one-on-one confrontation with the viewer, using the immediacy and intimacy of video as conceptual constructs. Exploring video as both a mirror and a masking device, and using her body as an art object, she undertakes an examination of self and identity, subjectivity and objectivity. Creating a series of inversions, she splits her image, splits the video screen, and splits her identification within the video space, playing with the spatial ambiguity of non-reversed images (video) and reversed images (mirrors). Though Jonas' approach is formalist and reductive, her performance reveals an ironic theatricality. Illustrating the phenomenology of video as a mirror, Left Side Right Side is a classic of early performance-based, conceptual video.
Cast
Joan Jonas
Crew
- Director
- Joan Jonas
Details
- Release date
- 1972-02-02
- Runtime
- 9m
- Genres
- Documentary
- Original language
- EN
- Spoken languages
- English
- Countries
- United States of America