Joan Jonas, Double Lunar Dogs

On Thursday, November 8 at 9pm, after dinner service, join us at Bar Laika for a screening of Double Lunar Dogs (1984, 24‘04”) by Joan Jonas.

Inspired by Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a drifting spaceship whose timeless travellers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. To recapture memory and create a continuum between their unknown origin and uncertain destination, the characters in this disjunctive, philosophical narrative play metaphorical games with words and archetypal objects. But their efforts to restore their collective memories are futile, and they are reprimanded by the “Authority” for their attempts to recapture their past on a now-destroyed planet Earth.

To depict this fantastic voyage, which was originally produced as a performance, Jonas uses sophisticated imaging techniques, special effects, and inserted vignettes created by a stellar group of avant-garde actors, video artists, and musicians including Spalding Gray, the Residents, Steina Vasulka, and Jonas herself.

Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video and performance art, and an acclaimed multimedia artist whose work typically encompasses video, performance, installation, sound, text, and drawing. Trained in art history and sculpture, Jonas was a central figure in the performance art movement of the late 1960s, and her experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s continue to be crucial to the development of many contemporary art genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theater. Since 1968, her practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Her work has been featured in the 56th Venice Biennale US Pavilion, in documenta, Kassel, and in numerous solo shows inlcuding at Tate Modern, London, at Queens Museum, New York, at The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík, and at the Vienna State Opera. Jonas is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the American Film Institute Maya Deren Award for Video (1989), and most recently, the Kyoto Prize (2018) for her immeasurable impact in pioneering the integration of performance art and new media.

Double Lunar Dogs is presented courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.