Glass Puzzle, a 1973 video performance by Joan Jonas, is a work of recursive introspection. It is simultaneously a video of a performance and a performance of video, using the medium as a form of spatial sculpture. The core elements in the piece consist of Jonas and her doppelganger, Lois Lane, the studio they’re performing in, a swinging bar affixed to the ceiling, their gestures and poses, the camera recording their performance (the active camera), the monitor receiving the projection of that performance, a second camera recording the surface of the monitor (the passive camera), the reflection seen in the monitor of the performance in the studio, light fixtures projecting against backdrops and curtains, shadows caused by the light, and a
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Within the space between the projected image and the reflected image lies a host of doubles, some real, some false, all of which refer back to the central relationship between the camera(s) and the monitor. The lights and shadows at the video’s start immediately forecast Jonas’ formal and thematic concern for simulacra, as the flailing figure casts two shadows at once behind her and is later joined by her doppelganger, also accompanied by her own pair of shadows. Meanwhile, in the center segment of the piece, the soundtrack—previously comprising only of the sounds of the room—gives way to the sound of two pairs of objects arrhythmically striking one another (echoing the discordant mimicry of the opening scene), an imperfect reverberation mirroring the dichotomies within the image(s). Furthermore, the two women are notably not playing themselves in the performance, but their alter egos (as clarified by the EAI’s description of the video), providing a foundation of artificiality separating the projected self from the internal. In her journal article “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” Rosalind Krauss posits that the nature of video performance facilitates “the presentation of a self understood to have. . . no connection with any objects that are external to it,” reasoning that the double …show more content…
Lane’s presence in the video provides a vehicle for the projection of Jonas’ self that is entirely separate from her representation on the monitor. The role of the monitor itself in the piece similarly offsets the typical scheme of video performance in that its function surpasses the status of object of representation and rises to the position of a performer in and of itself. In acting as a reflective surface, the monitor’s relationship with the image it projects becomes analogous to the relationship between Lane and Jonas. It shuts on and off repeatedly as Joan collapses to and then rises from the floor, reproducing her act of continual destruction and rebirth; it repeatedly inverts the values of the image as Jonas twirls the paper cone, translating the spatial dissonance of that scene into compositional flux. In her article, Krauss also delineates the difference between reflexive art and self-reflective art, asserting that video performance generally falls into the latter in that it “implies the vanquishing of separateness” between object and subject, while reflexive art splits the two into “two categorically different entities which can elucidate one another insofar as their separateness is maintained.” In Glass Puzzle, the subject and
Within the space between the projected image and the reflected image lies a host of doubles, some real, some false, all of which refer back to the central relationship between the camera(s) and the monitor. The lights and shadows at the video’s start immediately forecast Jonas’ formal and thematic concern for simulacra, as the flailing figure casts two shadows at once behind her and is later joined by her doppelganger, also accompanied by her own pair of shadows. Meanwhile, in the center segment of the piece, the soundtrack—previously comprising only of the sounds of the room—gives way to the sound of two pairs of objects arrhythmically striking one another (echoing the discordant mimicry of the opening scene), an imperfect reverberation mirroring the dichotomies within the image(s). Furthermore, the two women are notably not playing themselves in the performance, but their alter egos (as clarified by the EAI’s description of the video), providing a foundation of artificiality separating the projected self from the internal. In her journal article “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” Rosalind Krauss posits that the nature of video performance facilitates “the presentation of a self understood to have. . . no connection with any objects that are external to it,” reasoning that the double …show more content…
Lane’s presence in the video provides a vehicle for the projection of Jonas’ self that is entirely separate from her representation on the monitor. The role of the monitor itself in the piece similarly offsets the typical scheme of video performance in that its function surpasses the status of object of representation and rises to the position of a performer in and of itself. In acting as a reflective surface, the monitor’s relationship with the image it projects becomes analogous to the relationship between Lane and Jonas. It shuts on and off repeatedly as Joan collapses to and then rises from the floor, reproducing her act of continual destruction and rebirth; it repeatedly inverts the values of the image as Jonas twirls the paper cone, translating the spatial dissonance of that scene into compositional flux. In her article, Krauss also delineates the difference between reflexive art and self-reflective art, asserting that video performance generally falls into the latter in that it “implies the vanquishing of separateness” between object and subject, while reflexive art splits the two into “two categorically different entities which can elucidate one another insofar as their separateness is maintained.” In Glass Puzzle, the subject and