In Conversation: Joan Jonas and Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton:
So delighted to be here tonight with all of you. But of course, in particular, Joan, who I've known for over 20 years now.

Joan Jonas:
Yes. You were a baby when I met you.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes. So we met on... We used to both show at Yvon Lambert's Gallery. Yvon Lambert is a French dealer who used to have a gallery in New York and Chelsea on 25th Street. And Joan was sitting in the gallery... Or I was in the gallery.

Joan Jonas:
You were installing your show.

Adam Pendleton:
Oh, was I installing my show?

Joan Jonas:
Yes, you were.

Adam Pendleton:
I didn't remember that.

Joan Jonas:
There were paintings and they said, "Love."

Adam Pendleton:
Yes, amongst other things.

Joan Jonas:
I love the way you began, Love. Yeah.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes. And there was a couch in the back and you were sitting there, I believe you struck up a conversation.

Joan Jonas:
I must have because we were talking.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes. Yes.

Joan Jonas:
No, I'm kidding.

Adam Pendleton:
But it was not a frivolous conversation. You had a purpose to the-

Joan Jonas:
Did I?

Adam Pendleton:
Yes.

Joan Jonas:
What was it?

Adam Pendleton:
It was actually then when you asked me, "I'm looking for a musician, do you know any?" And I said, "Maybe, for what?" And you said, "For my performances." And I said-

Joan Jonas:
I was doing something at Dia Beacon.

Adam Pendleton:
That's right.

Joan Jonas:
Yeah. And go on.

Adam Pendleton:
And I said, "Yes, and..."

Joan Jonas:
No, you said you'd been listening to. Remember?

Adam Pendleton:
She has a better memory than me. I think I said, "I've been listening to a guy named Jason Moran." We looked him up and we saw that he was performing that evening at Jazz at Lincoln Center. And we went with... Remember that terrible gallery director?

Joan Jonas:
Maybe we'll talk about that later. I can't remember exactly. No, but we went together. All of us.

Adam Pendleton:
We went together. All of us. Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
We just rushed into it.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
And that was it.

Adam Pendleton:
That was it. Yeah. Well, you and Jason have done just incredible work, including the piece at Dia.

Joan Jonas:
I mean, you're part of the family, obviously, because I see you so often and see your work, and Jason does too. We're all close friends at the same.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. Yeah, we've all been friends ever since.

Joan Jonas:
It's always nice to hear how people met, and I don't remember how I met everybody, but there's certain people. I remember how I met Adam, which I'm happy about right now.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. Me too. So we're not supposed to just sit here and chat. There's purpose and structure. And funny enough, so one of the things that I wanted to do tonight was read to you something that has stuck in my mind ever since I've heard it. And I hear it still in my mind in fleeting moments. And it just left such a imprint on me and has been of such consequence. And I've never told you this. And The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things. "The actuality of the present, it's bearing on the past, their bearing on the future. Past, present, future. These three-fourth dimensional. The room has four sides. There are four seasons to a year. It is as simple and as inevitable in the building of time sequence as the fourth wall to a room."

Joan Jonas:
Thank you. Beautiful reading.

Adam Pendleton:
And of course, you know what that is from?

Joan Jonas:
I know what it is. Well, it's from The Shape, the Scent and the Feel of Things, which was based on Aby Warburg's writings. But I had been working with H.D, Hilda Doolittle, the poet, before that. And so this is a quote from H.D, and thank you for reading.

Adam Pendleton:
So the reason why I wanted to read it was these three-fourth dimensional. And I thought that could be a good way to start to talk about your drawings. These three-fourth dimensional, are they?

Joan Jonas:
They look flat to me. That's very interesting because I think that artists are always thinking about the fourth dimension. What is that? I don't know. I don't know if I've ever been there. But there's three dimensions. I know that. But one thing I could say to shift the emphasis a little bit is that some of my drawings, if I sit here and I look around the room, well, I remember when I did them and why. Some of them, not all of them. I mean, most of them. But some of them are actually portraits. So you could say the dimensional comes from the content. I'm not sure how.

Adam Pendleton:
No, I understand that. As in perhaps the gap in the ability to represent something and the inability to represent something could potentially be the fourth dimension.

Joan Jonas:
I mean, I've always struggled with drawing. And from all my life, I look on drawing, oh, I'm going to practice this so I can make a good drawing. You know what I mean?

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
And then I mean, of course, you can't make good drawings. You can't have that approach. But I was always struggling with, is it good or is it bad? And I want to learn how to draw because when I met you, I was still learning how to draw. And that took a long time. And then I'm still learning how to draw. That's the way I approach drawing.

Adam Pendleton:
I mean, I would argue that drawing is about learning, right? It's persistent. It's the mandate, right? To draw is to learn. To learn is to draw. This brings me to something else. I remember participating in your performance, Reading Dante, at the Gardner museum, November 20th, 2008. Do you remember this?

Joan Jonas:
I do.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. And thinking that the performance was a drawn space, which is to say provisional, mutable, changeable. Is the space of the performance a drawn space, so to speak, as much as it is a space for drawing?

Joan Jonas:
I think it is a drawn space because from the very beginning, I had to make a situation to step into, to step out of my everyday identity as JJ, whatever that is. And I had to do that. And I think that's a drawn space that you make a space and you draw in your imagination. Because I was always making, yeah, a situation that's drawn.

Adam Pendleton:
So one thing you do, which I find wonderful and terrible is, and we've talked about this before, but not in public, you make these drawings in the performances or you make these paintings in the performance.

Joan Jonas:
Their drawings.

Adam Pendleton:
Drawings, and then you destroy them.

Joan Jonas:
Oh, those, yes. I made very big drawings on black backdrop paper which I used quite a bit, and in the performance because I wanted... So for me, drawing is a series of many ways. How do you approach making a drawing and how do you approach it with your body? Do you just do this, which we do? Or do you do this? Or do you move around the room with a long stick with a chalk on the end of it and make a drawing that way? So I've experimented with all those drawings. And what was your question?

Adam Pendleton:
Why do you destroy them?

Joan Jonas:
Oh, why do I destroy? It was just part of the action because... I don't know why when I first did it. But then it became I would crumple up the paper until it was as small as I could get it and then fall on it. And everybody in the audience would be going, "Oh my God, she's destroying her drawing." I remember Chrissie Iles was just horrified. But I didn't want to horrify people, but I do like people to be not always comfortable. You shouldn't let them always be comfortable.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. Two questions come to mind. What is that moment like? And is there a distinction for you between that act of creation and that act of destruction, so to speak? Or are they very much so conflated in your mind, as in you can't really have one without the other, perhaps?

Joan Jonas:
Well, in performance situation, no. It just became part of the whole choreography, put it that way. But I just want to mention that when Adam was in Reading Dante, do you remember what you read?

Adam Pendleton:
I don't remember what I read.

Joan Jonas:
Oh, I should have looked it up but a beautiful voice. And I had a lot of people, several people Reading Dante. And so I just want to mention Adam's work. The last portrait you did that was in the Whitney Biennial is one of your many beautiful portraits. And it's an intriguing practice that you do, these portraits, with Ishmael. You did a portrait with Ishmael, and I just worked with him. So I love this overlap that we have. That's really important to me.

Adam Pendleton:
Before I respond to that, I'm just curious, and I'm sure others are too. What did you do with Ishmael? Ishmael Houston-Jones, by the way, is a dancer and choreographer who, yes, I shot a video portrait of. And in the portrait amongst other things, Ishmael performs, but it's completely improvised. He improvises. So he basically, like you, I would argue, creates a structure for action, for image making, for performance. But what happens in the moment, in the act of performing, it's mutable. It changes each time.

Joan Jonas:
Yeah. I mean, I asked him to be in my piece about whales and it looked like they were shot underwater and some of them... So he was dancing beautifully. And somebody like Ishmael, I would never tell him too many things to do. I wouldn't. I'd just say, "Can you react?" And I would just maybe go like this, and then he would take it from there in his own wonderful way. But I didn't know Ishmael. What I do enjoy is going up to people I don't know very well and asking them if they want to be in my piece. And it's a gamble but it's not really a gamble. I have a sense that it would be perfect, like you, but I knew years before that that you would be... Now you're too busy, I think. We've been crossing paths for years but... Yeah.

Adam Pendleton:
I'm not too busy. You haven't asked me in recent years. I would definitely say yes.

Joan Jonas:
Okay, now I have another piece and I hope you do.

Adam Pendleton:
So I, like you Joan, do not distinguish very much or at all between mediums, say painting, drawing, sculpture, performance. But I do distinguish between the temporal realities they make possible or represent. What kind, if any, temporal reality, does drawing represent or make possible for you?

Joan Jonas:
I don't know. Interesting question. Can you help me a little bit?

Adam Pendleton:
Sure. I mean, it sounds philosophical, but it's not actually. So for me, painting, right? Which is my primary medium, you can see the time in it. Or I'm interested in representing time in the work, in the painting, the labor, the body.

Joan Jonas:
Now I know what I could say, and that is, I was just looking at a drawing that wasn't put in the show. No fault. You probably didn't even see it, but I looked at the drawing that I made and I saw all these little tiny pencil marks. I colored in the whole thing like that, takes a lot of time. And for me, that's the time. Some drawings are very fast in my performances. I make them fast because who wants to watch an artist make a drawing in public? And then I throw the paper away because I don't want it to be about making a precious object in a performance or in public. And there's the time it takes to make certain of the drawings in this room, which is in my studio usually. I'm at a table making them. And then there's the time that takes to make a drawing in a performance, in a situation. And there's a big gesture and a small gesture. Yeah.

Adam Pendleton:
How have the gestures you make changed as you've changed? And I ask that because I always think about in relationship too. I think of painting as a performative act, even though it's, of course, not something that I do publicly. And there's a kind of tenderness to the pursuit because it's always really a question of what my body can and can't do. So I wonder, as I age, as you age, as we age, how does that inform what you do or do not do with your body? And how do you think through that?

Joan Jonas:
I mean, I can do much less than I could before, and I can't do difficult movements. I mean, I did a remake of a piece called Mirage at the Tate, and I couldn't even stand up by myself. You know what I mean? So your body really has a big effect on... But then you find ways of going around it. And I just did a performance with Jason, and all I had to do was walk back and forth on the stage, and pick up a few things and swing them around. So I purposely make it so I don't want to look awkward or old, actually, frankly. I always think, who is the actress? Anyway, humor is the best thing for old people. Humor. Do funny things. What's the name of that actress who was so great and she was a comedian? Nevermind but...

Speaker 1:
Betty White.

Joan Jonas:
No, not Betty. Well, she was great. Betty White is great. No, but there was another one. She was in the movies and it was a few years ago. She was well known. Anyway, never mind. She was an example to me of an old lady who was a comedian. And you don't think about her age because she's laughing at it. You know what I mean? I mean, I think that's, for me, important.

Adam Pendleton:
I mean, that's so interesting for me to hear because you have an incredible sense of humor, but I don't find you on stage funny.

Joan Jonas:
Well, thank you for explaining that. You cannot try to be funny. I see comedians, it's one of the things that interests me. I watch comedians on Instagram and other things. So they fascinate me and they're very... It's another story. But I never try to be funny. And I do make people laugh, but not on the stage. I mean, sometimes people laugh but that's... Humor for me has to be spontaneous or... I like to make people laugh, but I don't try.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. I mean, it is perhaps I can understand if we equate humor with honesty, right? And how it allows us to bridge that gap. Because what I do find about you performing, well, for one, I don't think of it as on stage, which I think is very important. So even with the performance lecture that you and Jason did at MoMA, it wasn't as though you were on stage apart from the audience, it was rather that you were being honest with the audience. The performance was about honesty. And I hate to use that phrase, about honesty, because also what I love about the performances is they're not about, I would argue, anything, say for the act itself. And that's what I locate in them, is the honesty of the act itself and the potential of the act itself.

Joan Jonas:
That's a beautiful description. Thank you. But it took me all those years and working with Jason actually to become at ease with improvising in public. I mean, until recently, and still I don't do it, but I choreograph everything and then I have to do it perfectly. I practice walking across the stage, picking up a piece of Kleenex off the floor and all that. I practice it so it's exactly because I have to figure out how do I move from here to there gracefully. Since I started working with Jason, who's a jazz composer, and when we do these things together, just by his presence, maybe your presence too, I don't know, made me... That duet we do together with all the instruments, I never did anything like that before. So Jason, because he's a jazz musician, immediately responds to everything. And immediately, you're brought into that rhythm. His rhythm or my rhythm. We work together. But to me, it's a great thing to discover at my age because well...

Adam Pendleton:
I mean, he turned you into a percussionist, arguably. So on one piece that you perform with him, you are activating the different objects that might find space in your performance. But not only do they find space in the performance, they find space in the song, in the music and the music of the performance.

Joan Jonas:
Yeah. I mean, it took me a while to figure out that we're really collaborators, Jason and I, because I'm not outside of it. And for me, it was like making the piece and then Jason did the music. And then I sit outside of it and I look at it, and everything is affected by everything else. So it's a real collaboration at the end.

Adam Pendleton:
There's a great album, just if you guys don't know about it, called Music for Joan Jonas that Jason put out, I don't know, what? Two-ish years ago. Unfortunately, or fortunately for him maybe, it's on Bandcamp. Do you guys know what Bandcamp is? So it's a little hard to access, but worth the slight extra effort. Doesn't Jason make everything seems so easy?

Joan Jonas:
Yes.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes. Which is so strange because... When I was watching you guys at MoMA, what really stood out for me is how rehearsed it was. And I could tell that this was not off the cuff, on the fly. But it never became heavy. It was still very light and generative and forgiving. And that's not easy to do. And I said, "Oh, Maestro." As in masters doing what they do, the craft. But I think that aspect of your work has, in other words, I think the first encounter, you think, oh, it's loose. It's about position and happenstance. But there's also a rigor to it that is deeply particular to you, which is not really a question. It's a compliment.

Joan Jonas:
Can't answer that question.

Adam Pendleton:
You can't answer that.

Joan Jonas:
No, but I will say that, I mean, you're another person that I feel totally at ease with in public. Having a conversation in public is not an easy thing. But with Jason, I also... Because we've spent hours and hours working together. And he laughs now. He laughs at everything I say. I love that. Speaking of humor. No, many things. And also, I mean, yeah, Jason and I tell the story of how we met. That's why I said to Adam, "People love that story, how you met." And we tell that every time that we do that piece. And there's certain things. Yeah, it is rehearsed, it's totally decided what follows what, and I have my movements all worked out. And that stage at the moment was very small, very small, but it was fine. All these things depend on rehearsal.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah. The last gesture that you made and that performance, I believe it... I can't recall exactly what the footage was, but David, who was, I think-

Joan Jonas:
David Sherman.

Adam Pendleton:
Sherman, who was improvising.

Joan Jonas:
Which footage?

Adam Pendleton:
I can't remember, but I believe it was the piece that focused on the bees and-

Joan Jonas:
The bees.

Adam Pendleton:
The children were reenacting the action of...

Joan Jonas:
The waggle dance.

Adam Pendleton:
The waggle dance. And in that moment, you are standing in front of the screen and you have a paddle in your arms, and it's like a kayak paddle, right?

Joan Jonas:
You know what? Let me tell you something before we go on.

Adam Pendleton:
Tell me.

Joan Jonas:
Which is very common, you put two things together that weren't together just now, which is fine.

Adam Pendleton:
Thank you. Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
And once I asked this very good friend of mine who's a curator, "What did you think of my show?" Because I saw her at a show and she said, "That was..." She couldn't remember. And that was my lesson that, I mean, many of us, we can't remember everything. So I'm just saying that of course, you got... So what you're talking about was the bee dance, and what'd you want to ask about that first?

Adam Pendleton:
Well, I didn't want to ask about the bee dance. I wanted to ask about the final gesture-

Joan Jonas:
Oh, I see, the paddle.

Adam Pendleton:
You made with... The paddle.

Joan Jonas:
I'll just tell the story. So one day, Jason and I were in Venice rehearsing for the piece there, and everybody went for lunch and we were left. He was at a piano, and I was on the stage. And I happened to have this oar from the Venice, from the canals, from the gondolas. Incredibly heavy wooden oar. But anyway. So we said, "Let's just work." And so we didn't talk about what we were going to do, but I picked up the oar and then he started playing the piano. It was a wonderful moment, actually. And then I had projected behind me, I put a GoPro camera on a wheel and filmed me and my dog walking up and down a hill. Remember that?

Adam Pendleton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Joan Jonas:
And it's not a special effect. The GoPro camera was filming us. And so against that, I have the oar. For me, it was important to have the line and the circle interacting, but that's what that was that you saw.

Adam Pendleton:
So it's a line for you. That's beautiful. Joan, one of my favorite places in New York, have I told you this? Is your loft.

Joan Jonas:
No. When do you want to come over?

Adam Pendleton:
Soon. So I love going to Joan's Loft because it's your home, but it's also your studio. Being there is like being overwhelmed by you in the most beautiful and touching way. And I remember the first time I came there, and as an artist, you never quite know what that means. To be an artist, you never quite know what that means. I'm an artist, I'm an artist, but what does that mean? And so you're always in the world looking for examples of what that means. And so, what? When we met, I was 20, 21 years old, so I came to your home. And that was such a powerful example of me, of what it is to be an artist in the world. And of course, one of the things I remember are all of the objects, the books, the drawings, the way in which you live with and inhabit your work. And so for me to see all these drawings here is actually a little strange.

Joan Jonas:
Well, they should exhibit longer.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes. Because I'm used to seeing them on-

Joan Jonas:
On the floor.

Adam Pendleton:
On the floor or on the table or you pulling them out of the drawer. So I wonder what that is like for you? What's it like for you to have all of these drawings here?

Joan Jonas:
I have to say that it's incredible. Great. Because I've never had a drawing show. This is the first real drawing show I've ever had, and I've been making these drawings for-

Adam Pendleton:
About time.

Joan Jonas:
Yeah. And it's particularly nice for it to be in the neighborhood, of course, at The Drawing Center. So important. And I mean, I'm surprised, frankly. The Drawing Center, they did a fantastic job of installing the drawings. We should give them a hand because... I mean, you can't imagine what it'd be like to have all these drawings and think, "Where are we going to put them on the wall?" Yeah. Anyway. I'm very, very happy about it. People keep saying, "How do you feel?" I don't know how I feel. But no, this is thrilling to have. I can say that it's thrilling to have this show like this and to have the drawings out. They're usually in a drawer. They're always in a drawer. You saw them lying around, depending on what day you got there but... And each of the drawings, they're all related to certain periods and pieces that I was working on. Anyway.

Adam Pendleton:
Let's talk about the animals, which are the fishes, the dogs, the birds, a camel, a moose, that are around us. And you just said something earlier in the conversation about portraiture. And of course, usually we think about the human body, the human face. But these are animals which you love and-

Joan Jonas:
Well, they're not all. I didn't know all of them.

Adam Pendleton:
Not all of them. But what do you hope to represent, if anything?

Joan Jonas:
Good question. I mean, the first thing that comes to me is something real. I'm not sure what that means. And I never know how to answer that question. But for instance, some of the drawings in this, the dog drawings are portraits. They're from... I made of this particular drawing. And you can tell the difference, the way that figures are looking out. But I look over there and I see an owl that definitely looks like somebody I know, or it looks like my dog, Ozu. Looking out the middle one, the head. It's definitely a character. And that's a mystery that I don't know how to... I have no control over it. And it's just a thing that happens. If you draw something, the spirit comes through. Maybe, if you draw it, but you'd never know if it's going to. This is not answering your questions, but-

Adam Pendleton:
It is.

Joan Jonas:
I made a hundred fish drawings. When I first started drawing a fish, I was on my way to Japan and I was thinking how much fish they eat over there. And so I made a drawings of a hundred fish and made a big installation with fish drawings hanging. I often work like that with... When I start making bird drawings, I just keep making bird drawings because part of it is, oh, I've got to make this better, or this has got to get better. You know what I mean? It's a combination of different desires.

Adam Pendleton:
So Joan, this is my last written remark. But anyway, I'll just start. To load, to work, to rework, to handle, to shift, to invoke, to hold, to hold dear, to press, to press on, to divide, to cherish, to flourish, to sully, to adore, to define, to frame, to handle gently, to age, to move on, to return, to forgive, to speak, to speak by, to turn, to enter, to heat, to warn, to revise, to be redrawn, to be drawn, to draw, to remember, to you, to Joan Jonas.

Joan Jonas:
Thank you, Adam. That was so beautiful.

Adam Pendleton:
Okay, we can open it up.

Joan Jonas:
I'll just say quickly that I'm so glad. Adam and I have been friends all these years since we first met, and it's so amazing that we're sitting here together. It's a good development.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah.

Laura Hoptman:
Thank you. I wanted to ask both of you about the relationship between... Because both of you are very involved with language and words, poetry. Both of you, great lovers of poetry. What the relationship between the image and the word is in your work. Because it brought this to mind, Adam, because you have a lot of words in your work, but to me, they're stand-ins for images. We can get into the semiotics of that if you want to, I don't. And Joan, it seems to me to be the opposite, that your images are stand-ins for language or for poetry. But that's just my feeling. What is the relationship between word and image in both of your works?

Joan Jonas:
Well, I've always been a big reader, like many of us here are. And so I've loved novels and poetry. And when I began to work as a visual artist, I went from studying art history and sculpture to making what I make now. And that was a big transition. And the thing I said at the very beginning was that I didn't see a major difference between, I said this so many times, but between a poem, a picture, a video, a song. I really didn't see a different, I just saw a structural difference. So for me, from the very beginning, it was bringing those things together. And then a poem would inspire me, a poem by somebody else. I don't write poetry, but I make lists. I used to be very inspired by James Joyce because he used mythology in his work. And so there's always been an interplay for me between literature, poetry, and my work, my visual work.

Adam Pendleton:
Well, the work that I've been working on making for the past several years, the paintings, for example, they don't have words, they have language or they have letters, right? Which is probably a representation of language or the prospect of language. So I'm increasingly interested in the prospect of it, but on a deeper level, really a visual vocabulary, which isn't about an image or not an image. It is like a dialogic space, but it's really about the act, the gesture, and the potential and the possibility of those things.

Joan Jonas:
I mean, do you consider yourself a performer?

Adam Pendleton:
No, not at all.

Joan Jonas:
Really?

Adam Pendleton:
No.

Joan Jonas:
Interesting.

Adam Pendleton:
Not at all.

Joan Jonas:
I was just going to say that you're such a beautiful performer. I mean, when he read, as an example, Reading Dante, you have an incredible voice and so on, and you read beautifully. So I'm surprised that you don't think of yourself as you're more outside of it. Yeah. No, I see that.

Speaker 2:
Hi. I have two questions for Joan. One, was it Lily Tomlin earlier? The comedian-actress you were trying to think of?

Joan Jonas:
What'd you ask about Canadian actresses?

Speaker 2:
No, the actress-comedian earlier we're talking about, was it Lily Tomlin?

Joan Jonas:
What was I saying about a Canadian actress?

Speaker 1:
Older actress. Comedian.

Joan Jonas:
Comedian-actress.

Speaker 1:
Is it Lily Tomlin?

Joan Jonas:
Is it really what?

Speaker 1:
Lily Tomlin?

Joan Jonas:
No.

Speaker 2:
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1:
Good guess.

Speaker 2:
She's so funny.

Joan Jonas:
I mean, I think she's-

Adam Pendleton:
We are all going to guess one by one.

Speaker 2:
Yeah. I think it's important.

Joan Jonas:
She's very funny, Lily Tomlin, but it's not her.

Speaker 2:
Also, if you're reading anything right now, what are you reading?

Joan Jonas:
I'm not able to read very much lately, and I'm just beginning... When you get old, what's one thing? Is your eyesight is not quite... It's not so easy. But even if my eyes are getting better now, I'm not reading, I'm just looking at things. And during Covid, I looked at a lot of films. That's one of the things I did. I didn't read. I looked at films on Criterion. All the films I'd never seen of all kinds. So right now, what am I reading? What book do I have put aside? I read about things. I read The New York Review of Books. I'm always doing research about certain aspects of art practiced by different groups of people that we don't see very much of. So I'm just reading a very interesting article in that respect.

Speaker 3:
Hi. Are the shows you did at MoMA available somewhere like the Library Performing Arts?

Adam Pendleton:
Are the shows you did at MoMA available somewhere like the Library of Performance Art?

Speaker 3:
To be watched?

Joan Jonas:
Oh, the only way that you can see things that I've done is my recordings. I record everything and we edit them. And so I'm talking about full performances, not just everything. Like the Jason, they recorded that. I don't know what it's like. But it's an interesting question because it's hard to see those things. And they're not available at MoMA as far as I know. I could say, "Let's set up a library." No, but that can't be just me. It has to be a whole situation that they're willing to go into, which they may not be. There's a lot of work. I'll just mention a few situations that have changed and made everything easier for people like me, which is Electronic Arts Intermix, an organization that's been here since the, I don't know, early '70s when video came out. And what they did was they took your work, they kept it.
Video is a very unstable medium. It could fall apart any minute. And if you don't continuously upgrade it, you can't play it. They want us to buy more machines, so they keep making machines. And the old ones are obsolete, you can't play your old things. So it's a constant coming together, and it takes work, but it's possible if it's already made and it's not distributed. I mean, I think the gallery system made it difficult for the audience, frankly. And I show my work in galleries. I don't know how you feel about that, but the audience does not have immediate access to the gallery.

Speaker 3:
Okay.

Speaker 1:
But MoMA has made a Joan Jonas channel now.

Speaker 3:
Oh.

Joan Jonas:
They what?

Speaker 1:
They made a Joan Jonas channel on the MoMA website. I noticed it today.

Joan Jonas:
Oh, I know but it doesn't really show my work. Yeah, I know what you mean but no.

Speaker 1:
Joan, also, Ubu has the older one.

Joan Jonas:
What?

Speaker 1:
Ubu dot com.

Adam Pendleton:
Ubu has the older work, she's saying. Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
You see, I don't know, because I don't really know about myself.

Speaker 3:
And my comedian guesses would be Phyllis Diller or Moms Mabley.

Adam Pendleton:
Phyllis Diller or Moms Mabley.

Laura Hoptman:
We're all going to guess.

Joan Jonas:
Let me just say, she was an older woman.

Laura Hoptman:
Joan Rivers?

Joan Jonas:
No. No, she didn't have a talk show. She was just in films. And she's very well known. And she did one film with a young boy who acted with her in the film.

Speaker 1:
Ruth Gordon.

Joan Jonas:
Who?

Laura Hoptman:
From Harold and Maude.

Speaker 1:
Ruth Gordon.

Joan Jonas:
Who?

Speaker 1:
Ruth Gordon?

Joan Jonas:
Ruth Gordon. Thank God we got that figured out.

Adam Pendleton:
I think we're ending on that note.

Laura Hoptman:
We have more time to end it in.

Adam Pendleton:
Joan said she's happy to take more questions, though.

Joan Jonas:
I mean, maybe I won't be happy if you ask.

Adam Pendleton:
Yes.

Speaker 4:
Yeah. I have one question, because you have a wall full of your dog drawings back there, and your dogs are in many of your videos. I don't know. How did that start to have your dogs in your actual videos? And as you talk about how staged your videos are, how did you get your dogs to do exactly what you wanted them to do at the right time?

Joan Jonas:
Because my dogs are geniuses. I made a piece called Organic Honey. I mean, that was Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy. And I got the video camera and I was working with things, I believe, very much in the bricoleur that you work with what is around you and you put together what you have. And I still have that kind of basic approach. And so I began to make video work. I got a video camera. I came back and I put my dog in it. It was just there. My dog was part of my life. The first dog was Sappho and she was in the early works. And then later on, Xena was a brilliant performer. Xena, whenever I set the camera up and I'd have my costume on, my hat, my robe, my flag, Xena would come right up and we'd walk down the hill. She'd go ahead of me, just like that. I didn't have to say anything to Xena. And Xena just jumped through hoop at a moment's notice. Ozu, my present dog, he sees a hoop and he runs the other way.

Adam Pendleton:
Sure.

Laura Hoptman:
I was wondering if you have a favorite piece of yours.

Joan Jonas:
Said what?

Laura Hoptman:
You have a favorite piece of yours.

Joan Jonas:
I think for many years, and it's not my only favorite piece, there's a piece called Mirage, it's at the MoMA. I don't really have favorite pieces, but that, Mirage, was a piece that was open-ended that I could keep going back to. Because when I finished my work, like Organic Honey, I never would go back and re-edit or open that up again and try to do it over again or in a different way. But with Mirage, I didn't change anything, but I could rearrange it. And the idea of it was something that I could continually go back to and bring back in different ways. So it's not my favorite piece, but it is a piece that represents that.

Adam Pendleton:
Drafts and revisions.

Speaker 5:
Thank you. I was in Munich a year and a half ago. And I was walking down the street near the English Garden, and I saw your video, the dog video, projecting onto the street. And my husband and I were just mesmerized by the video, and we were drawn to go, and we saw the exhibit at the House of Art. I'm not going to say it in German, but I think it's... Well, the House of Art is translated. Yeah. And so I'm assuming that was you in the video?

Joan Jonas:
Pardon me?

Speaker 5:
The video-

Adam Pendleton:
Is that you in the video?

Joan Jonas:
That was Ragani Haas.

Speaker 5:
Oh, it wasn't you?

Joan Jonas:
No. Why should it be?

Speaker 5:
I don't know.

Joan Jonas:
No, I don't perform. I mean, I work with other people. And Ragani was my student in street art, and she worked with me for I don't know how many years. She's a wonderful performer, and that's her. And we made that one day in my loft. We were just fooling around, projecting things, and she was performing in front of it. So that's how things come together.

Speaker 5:
That was amazing. And then I saw the portraits of the dogs. What is the connection between the portrait of the dog and the movements in the video?

Joan Jonas:
Was there a portrait of the dog in the video?

Speaker 5:
Well, no, no. I mean, it was amazing that-

Joan Jonas:
Were there other room?

Speaker 5:
Well, the portraits are here of the dogs and I was amazed by the way-

Joan Jonas:
I could say there's no relation, actually. I mean, there is relation because I did it, but no, there's no relation.

Speaker 5:
I thought the way you captured the movements, where she captured the movements, I thought there was-

Joan Jonas:
Oh, the dog.

Speaker 5:
That you would have to really know the dogs really well. Yeah.

Adam Pendleton:
That the way you captured the movements would mean you must have known the dogs really well.

Joan Jonas:
Not really.

Speaker 5:
No. No. No.

Joan Jonas:
No, look, I mean, this is, what? Your movements, right? That was Ragani walking around on all fours.

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah.

Speaker 5:
Well, okay. Well, I thought it was amazing.

Adam Pendleton:
It is what it is.

Joan Jonas:
It is what it is. That's a good one.

Speaker 6:
I have a question for Adam that hopefully doesn't seem super off-topic but a lot of this has been about artistic collaboration, relationship building. And I know you're collaborating with Adrienne Edwards on an Alvin Ailey show later this year and I'm curious what that process has been like, what kind of collaboration comes through that kind of posthumous, intergenerational work and how you've approached that differently than other artistic collaborations.

Adam Pendleton:
Well, I am actually not doing that. You're not wrong. I was doing it but I need a certain... I'm not doing it.

Laura Hoptman:
You're not interested? Or are you not involved in it? What-

Adam Pendleton:
No, I was working on a video piece that would have delved into the life and work of Alvin Ailey. However, where I wanted to go creatively with it was very different than the contours of the exhibition that it would've existed within, and therefore, it did not make sense for me to do it.

Joan Jonas:
Adam makes beautiful portraits.

Adam Pendleton:
Thank you, Joan. Okay. I think one more.

Speaker 7:
If you're up to one more question. I don't even know if you would really want to answer this, but I hear on the one hand that you're working like a bricoleur, whatever's around you, there is improvisation. But then on the other hand, Joan, you talk so much about rehearsing how you went across the stage. And then at MoMA, I was there, I saw you moving across and there was no feeling of it being... It felt like an improvisation, even though you had rehearsed it. And so I'm feeling like there's this tension or some kind of interaction between letting things happen, like letting a child saying... Giving them very limited instructions and letting them, it's almost magical, letting them go. And you do that to yourself too, but it's like, how do you navigate between those two polarities?

Joan Jonas:
Well, because I don't think of those two being separate. It's all part of the same process. So I'm not navigating between two things at all. I'm learning something and then moving with it. And I mean, in the case that you saw with Jason, we've done that piece four times, I think, and it's grown and become more cohesive. And it's very relaxing to do that piece with Jason. What can I say? So on the one hand, all my work is based on something. It's not just when I muse the word improvisation, no. The last piece I did was about whales. It was based on a friend, David Gruber. Have you met him yet?

Adam Pendleton:
I did meet David, yeah.

Joan Jonas:
Anyway, David Gruber is a marine biologist that I've been working with. And what I do with him is he shows me his underwater footage, which is incredibly beautiful. And also now he's doing a project about whales. And so I wanted to continue and to give him... I'm just explaining one piece. So I wanted to give him credit. I wanted to make something with his name, for David Gruber or something like that, because I like his work so much. So the piece at MoMA about whales, we had to go through pages of interviews and facts. How do you choose from those? Were so much. What do you choose to say? And they're thinking, "How can I explain this to the audience? How can I say what's going on without going on and on and on?" Do you know what I mean?

So it's not just going like that. It's a lot of planning and work. I always say to people, if they only knew how much work there is behind... No, I mean, when you go to a show, you just don't know the hours, right? You will have experienced that. And no, I'm just saying that those are not separate.

Speaker 7:
Right. No, it doesn't look at all casual. It doesn't look casual but it still has... It doesn't look casual.

Joan Jonas:
No performer wants the audience to feel uncomfortable because it looks like it's a big effort to do it.

Speaker 7:
It's real.

Joan Jonas:
You can't look like you're making a big effort. So of course, it's all different with each performance.

Speaker 7:
Yeah. I think that-

Adam Pendleton:
I understand.

Speaker 7:
Yeah, I said it looks real.

Joan Jonas:
What?

Speaker 7:
It's real. You're not acting.

Joan Jonas:
No, I'm not an actress, but I'm a behavior. I like what Score says. He says, "Acting is behaving." And I really think that's true because I've worked with the Wistar Group a little bit, and they would not want me to be an actress. Believe me.

Laura Hoptman:
With that, that was a quick, short, brilliant hour. Thank you so much all of you for coming. Thank you so much to Joan. Adam Pendleton for being such a brilliant interlocutor. And thank you all for coming to The Drawing Center. Please come back again. The show is up in the very beginning of June. And as you're leaving, there are two things that I forgot to say. One was that you had a show at Tate not to long ago and Adam has now declared himself a painter, when you've declared yourself a drawer for me.

Adam Pendleton:
No, I do both.

Joan Jonas:
Oh, then I want to say one thing before you all go. Excuse me. I'd like to say one thing. First of all, Adam supported this show also. You supported the catalog, which is an amazing act that, Adam, of generosity. Yes, it is. I mean, it's very seldom that artists work together that way. Thank you, Adam. Yeah. And Adam has a show coming up pretty soon at Pace, right?

Adam Pendleton:
Yeah.

Joan Jonas:
When is that?

Laura Hoptman:
May 2nd.

Adam Pendleton:
May 2nd.

Joan Jonas:
So everybody has to go and see his show, May 2nd. Yeah.

Adam Pendleton:
Thank you, Joan. Thank you.