A Human Body in the Body of the Planet: Conversation with Joan Jonas

The essay takes the form of a conversation with the american artist Joan Jonas (New York 1936), focussing her passage from a kind of performance she did in the 60s and 70s, in which she used to take into consideration her personal body as a political and feminist body, to the new perspective in which the human flesh is considered to be part of the whole planet, in a humble position, in a position of listening the averall pulse of nature; in particular, the last performances of the artitis deal with the Ocean and its stories, true or imaginary, including myths and legends that carry with them the history of the relation between the human and the creatures living in the water and the water itself. In a perspective that touches many authors, from Donna Haraway to other spinozist theoricians, the artist underlines the sense of unity of the whole life on the planet and her attempts to visualise this unity by swimming, touching fishes, recreating a sense of fluidity. The composition of the final performance includes videos in which she is the protagonist, but in front of them her own body moves, dances, talks, reads poetry and includes her dog or children as symbols for the unity of the whole nature. Vitality and hope in the future, albeit the dangerous situation in which human kind has put itself, is magnified and syombolized by a bright colorful context that includes music and a theatrical atmosphere. This is also a way to renovate the language of visual art itself, with no more boundaries between visual artm dance, poetry, theatre, music, and generally speaking performing arts. Therefore, even in his late eighties, Joan Jonas confirms her powerful strength as a pioneer both in terms of topics and visual language.