Joan Jonas, USA
Left Side Right Side
USA, 1972
Video, 8:49 min
In this early work, Jonas translates her performance strategies into video, applying the inherent properties of the medium to her investigations of the self and the body. Jonas performs in a direct, one-on-one confrontation with the viewer, using the immediacy and intimacy of video as conceptual construct. Creating a series of inversions, she splits the video screen, and splits her identification within the video space, playing with the spatial ambiguity of non-reversed images (video) and reversed images (mirrors). Illustrating the phenomenology of video as a mirror, „Left Side Right Side” is a classic of early performance-based, conceptual video.