Song Delay
Joan Jonas

SALT Galata, Floor -1

Joan Jonas
Song Delay (1973)
16 mm film
Duration: 18’35”

This 1973 black-and-white film is a rediscovered classic. Performing with a “cast” that includes Gordon Matta-Clark, Joan Jonas choreographs a theater of space, movement, and sound, featuring the urban landscape of New York in a key role. Jonas creates a highly original if enigmatic theatrical language of gesture and sound, as she and her performers play with emblematic props, unexpected rhythms of space and scale, references to painting, and audio delays. At once delightfully improvisational and precisely choreographed, Song Delay resonates with themes and strategies that recur throughout Jonas’ performance work.

Camera: Robert Fiore. Editors: Robert Fiore, Joan Jonas. Sound Technician: Kurt Munkacsi. Performers: Ariel Bach, Marion Cajuri, James Cobb, Carol Gooden, Randy Hardy, Michael Harvey, Glenda Hydler, Joan Jonas, EP Kotkas, Gordon Matta-Clark, Michael Oliver, Steve Paxton, Penelope, James Reineking, Robin Winters.

Joan Jonas (b. 1936) is an acclaimed multi-media performance artist and a major figure in video art. From her seminal performance-based exercises of the 1970s to her later televisual narratives, Jonas’ elusive theatrical portrayal of female identity offers a unique and intriguing inquiry.


Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)