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2016.41.2
Vertical Roll
Artist
Joan Jonas
(New York City, 1936 - )
Title
Vertical Roll
Creation Date
1972
Century
mid-20th century
Dimensions
Running Time: 19:38
Object Type
video
Medium and Support
black & white, sound
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. and Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2016.41.2
Vertical Roll is among Jonas’s earliest and most canonical works. The percussive sound of a spoon hitting a surface, combined with the optically dizzying effect of the video frame sliding down the screen, disrupt viewing conventions, perhaps as an inter-medial reference to the traditional movement of film through a projector. The video records earlier documentation of the artist performing a range of identities, played back on a monitor that the artist manipulates by altering the signal function to create the “vertical roll.” Fragmenting space and time, Jonas explores the self-reflexive terms of the video medium itself—as both direct projection of another world and a mirror onto our own. Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video art. Her performance-based practice, launched in the 1960s, presents the female body as a conduit for broader investigations of theater, space, and dance as expressions of female identity.
