Double Lunar Dogs, based on Robert Heinlein's science-fiction story "Universe," is about passengers who have been aboard a spaceship for so long that they no longer remember their mission. The small team of astronauts moves through the starry sky in a cabin that resembles a mad-scientist's lab. The fragmented story is told by means of special effects and inserted vignettes created by a stellar group of avant-garde actors, video artists, and musicians, including Spalding Gray, the Residents, and Steina Vasulka.
Jonas was among the first artists in the 1970s to combine performance and video. Her work, at times, has expanded to encompass dance and sculpture. She has often adapted her intricate and personal performances into narrative videotapes to give them added dimension. In both mediums, she incorporates her signature gestural actions and symbolic props, such as mirrors, masks, and hearts, as a means of exploring subjectivity and identity.
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 328.
Gallery label from Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning, March 17–July 6, 2024
By the 1970s Jonas began to play with narrative and increasingly turned to video effects and animation to articulate her performances in new mediums. For her first video works, the artist drew from the conventions of early cinema, while also exploring what was particular to the new medium of video. For I Want to Live in the Country (And Other Romances) she edits herself in as the protagonist, narrator, and audience, appearing in the corner to watch the image of a screen within a screen. In the 1980s, Jonas experimented with special effects more than ever before with Double Lunar Dogs —a performance she later shot on film and transformed into moving image.
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Joan Jonas
American, born 1936 30 works onlineFew artists can claim to have initiated a new form of art. Joan Jonas, however, was crucial to the formation of two— video and performance .
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Video
A term describing moving-image artworks recorded onto magnetic tape or digital formats, or generated using other mechanisms such as image-processing tools.
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