Tuesday 21 October at 21.00 Pirelli Hangar Bicocca presents the Italian premiere of the performance reanimation, a collaboration between artist Joan Jonas and jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran for the Joan Jonas exhibition Light Time Tales, curated by Andrea Lissoni (open until 1.02.2015).
resuscitation represents a unique opportunity to attend the most recent and intense live performance by the artist who will represent the USA at the 2015 Venice Biennale. For the first time resuscitation it takes place within the largest anthological exhibition dedicated to her, in a context full of thematic and formal references.
The performance – one of the declinations of the work resuscitation (2010/2012/2013) present in the exhibition – takes place as an open dialogue between the two protagonists, developing with different tempos and rhythms, around moments of pure musical improvisation. Jason Moran performs live, with a piano, a mixer and a drum machine and interacts both with the artist's movements and with the transformations on stage. In a kaleidoscopic movement of acoustic universes, projected visual elements, objects and stage tools activated by Joan Jonas, the performance goes back through the source of the work, the script Under the Glacier (1968) by author Halldór Laxness, which tells of glaciers and refers to some miraculous aspects of the natural world.
The pianist creates a score that moves from the typical conversation on which jazz improvisation is based and opens up to the conception of enthralling sound sequences inspired by electronic dance culture. The melody interpreted by Moran is superimposed on the noises derived from the movements of Joan Jonas who uses bells, whistles and small horns she made with toys and kitchen utensils, creating new sounds.
Drawing plays a leading role and is used as a medium that interprets and amplifies the relationships between gesture, rhythm and video technology. The artist, according to one of the modalities present since his first performances, draws in front of the public with rapid gestures and often in a single stroke: his movements and the signs, traced on a small blackboard, are taken up and re-projected in a complex game of references and superimpositions that involves the entire scene.
Joan Jonas' successful collaboration with Jason Moran began in 2005 at the performance The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things at Dia:Beacon (New York). Of their exchange Joan Jonas says: «Working with Jason is an experience somewhat comparable to a jazz piece. It is always similar and always slightly different. Music gives me energy and inspires me with movement, images and live sounds».
resuscitation has a link with the installation of the same name which is located within the exhibition in the spaces of the "Cubo" of Pirelli HangarBicocca. It was presented for the first time in 2010 as a performance for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston and was then developed into its current version with the presence of Jason Moran in 2012, on the occasion of dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
After the Milan stage, the performance will be hosted by the Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
John Jonas (1936, New York) is one of the most respected and recognized living artists. Considered the foremost authority on the history and theory of performance, she established herself in the 60s and 70s thanks to her pioneering performance and video practice. Her work has reinterpreted the relationship between art and the forms of narration in an absolutely original way, including in her works, alongside the video image, sculpture and performance, the presence of the word as an engine of the imaginary. Joan Jonas will represent the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale, opening in May 2015, with an exhibition presented by the MIT List of Visual Arts Center. She is currently Professor Emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Program in Art, Culture and Technology in Boston, and is the author of reference books on the subject of performing arts. He has participated in the most important group exhibitions of the last thirty years, including the Venice Biennale in 2009 and six editions of documenta in Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 2002, 2012).
Jason Moran (1975, Houston) is a pianist, composer and performer artist. In 2010 he received the MacArthur Fellow and is currently artistic director of the jazz section at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Washington DC). In addition to his many record productions with the likes of Charles Lloyd and The Bandwagon trio (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen), Jason Moran's practice includes an intense and lively series of collaborations with visual artists including Theaster Gates, founder of the non-profit space Rebuild Foundation, with whom he composed the music for the performance Looks of a Lot presented in 2014 at the Chicago Symphony Center; Stan Douglas for the video work Luanda-Kinshasa (2013) in which he appears as one of the performers; conceptual artist Glenn Ligon with whom he composed the music for the video The Death of Tom (2008) and American artist Joan Jonas. In addition to the performance resuscitation the two collaborated for the realization of the music of the opera The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things first presented in 2005 at Dia:Beacon and for work My New Theater: Reading Dante III (2008) exhibited in 2009 at the Venice Biennale.
The exhibition by Joan Jonas Light Time Tales it is open Thu-Sun, 11-23. Sunday 19 October will be closed to allow the correct setting up of the performance, while the exhibition will be regularly open to the public Parrot by João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva and the permanent work of Anselm Kiefer.
On Tuesday 21st October the performance will take place inside the Joan Jonas exhibition Light Time Tales, whose videos will remain off to allow full use of the performance. Exceptionally, the exhibition of Gusmão & Paiva and the work of Anselm Kiefer will be open from 19 to 23 pm.
Photo: Paula Court. Courtesy the artist.
