Joan Jonas in Conversation with Bonnie Marranca and Claire MacDonald 
Thursday, April 8, 2010 @ 7pm
FREE and open to the public
Drawing/Performance/Video
Exhibition by Joan Jonas
March 20–May 8, 2010
(Doors at 6:30 *Please arrive early
as space is limited.*)
"I didn't see a major difference between a
poem, a sculpture, a film, or a dance. A gesture
has for me the same weight as a drawing:
draw, erase, draw, erase–memory erased."
-Joan Jonas
In conjunction with Joan Jonas's new exhibition Drawing/Performance/Video on view through May 8, Location One
proudly presents an evening of discussion about Jonas's work. For several decades Joan Jonas has been a major influence in demonstrating the relationship of
performance and drawing. At Location One she will join critics Bonnie Marranca and Claire MacDonald
for an evening of conversation on her work process and innovative approaches in bringing together
performance, drawing, and text.
Claire MacDonald
has a long history in the arts as a performer, curator, editor,
writer and researcher, beginning with performance work with Impact Theatre in the UK, which she
co-founded in the 1980s. She has also been artistic director of the Cambridge Darkroom Gallery,
where she curated work by many artists working at the border of photographic, sculptural and
performance practices. MacDonald co-founded the international journal Performance Research and is
currently the Director of the International Centre for Fine Arts Research at the University of the
Arts London/Central St. Martins. She has a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University
of East Anglia.
Bonnie Marranca
is founding publisher and editor of the Obie-Award winning PAJ
Publications and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. She is the author of Performance Histories,
Ecologies of Theatre, and Theatrewritings, which received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic
Critcism. In addition, she has also edited several anthologies, including New Europe: plays from the
continent, Conversations on Art and Performance, Interculturalism and Performance, and Plays for the
End of the Century. A Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar (Free University-Berlin), she
has taught and lectured in many universities here and abroad. A recent recipient of the Leverhulme
Trust Visiting Professorship, at Queen Mary/ University of London and University of the Arts London.
She is Professor of Theatre at The New School for Liberal Arts/Eugene Lang College.
Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video-performance art. Her experiments
and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s were essential to the formulation of
the genre. Threads of Jonas’s influence can be found in many genres; from performance
and video to conceptual art and theater.
Jonas has worked with composers such as Alvin Lucier and Jason Moran to develop
video-performance works. Her work continues to explore the relationship of digital
media to performance.
Jonas has had major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1994), and
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Germany (2000), and was represented in Documenta V, VI,
VII and XI in Kassel, Germany. In 2004, the Queens Museum of Art presented Joan
Jonas: Five Works, the first major exhibition of the Joan Jonas’s work in a New York
museum. The exhibition included a selection of the artist’s most significant installations,
a video room, and a survey of Jonas’ drawings, photographs, and sketchbooks.
The first installation and performance of Jonas’s Reading Dante was at the 2008
Biennale of Sydney. Later that year Jonas performed the work at the Yokohama
Triennale, and also performed a reading at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
Boston. Jonas was featured in the International Pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale
where she installed Reading Dante II. Most recently, the artist presented Reading Dante
II at the Performing Garage in New York as part of Performa ’09, and selected elements
of this performance are featured in Reading Dante III at Yvon Lambert New York. Also at
the Museum of Modern Art, through May 31, 2010, Performance 7: Mirage, which is a
reimagining of the groundbreaking performance originally created in 1976. In 2009
Jonas was awarded the Guggenheim’s first annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
Joan Jonas is represented by Yvon Lambert Gallery, and was Senior Artist in Residence
at Location One in 2008-09.
ABOUT LOCATION ONE
Based in the Soho arts district of New York, Location One is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering new forms of creative expression and cultural exchange through exhibitions, residencies, performances, public lectures and workshops. Traditionally focused on technological experimentation and new media, Location One's residencies and programs have favored social and political discourse and dialogue, and acted as a catalyst for collaborations. With a unique environment providing individualized training, support, and guidance to each artist, as well as exposure for their creations and collaborations, Location One continues to nurture the spirit of experimentation that it considers the cornerstone of its mission.
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