We are still in a period, which I describe from Joseph Conrad, as after the “shadow line.” Before the shadow line you don’t care what you do, you just do it… “Fuck you, I’m doing what I do.” But after the shadow line it becomes reverberation. It’s like so much is being done after the black square and after abstract expressionism and after Warhol that is just reverberations. I feel we are still in this transitional period when we have so much respect for all that, that we are re-hashing the same. There is no new explosion. We need like a new booster. But I think that the computer—there is something to that, there in this computer generation, I think there is something new beginning that is there. — Jonas Mekas*
On the occasion of the Jewish Museum exhibition JONAS MEKAS—THE CAMERA WAS ALWAYS RUNNING, a group of Columbia University Visual Arts MFA candidates and recent alumni will present IN RESPONSE—JONAS MEKAS, a selection of new video, performance, and installation work.
Participating artists include Kaela Mei-Chee Chambers, Fadl Fakhouri, Linnéa Gad (with Will Epstein), Elisheva Gavra (with Layla Klinger), Jacq Groves, Erin Holland, Julia Jalowiec (with Josh Jalowiec), Char Jeré and Meaghan Elyse Lueck, Sophie Kovel, John Thomas Levee, Alison Nguyen, and Vivian Vivas (with Claire Gendler).
See links below for details.
JONAS MEKAS—THE CAMERA WAS ALWAYS RUNNING
Organized by Kelly Taxter, with Kristina Parsons
Through June 5
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue (at 92nd Street), New York City
Sunday, May 15, at 7 pm
Scheuer Auditorium—The Jewish Museum
*“A Conversation Between Film Legend Jonas Mekas and Director Jim Jarmusch,” Another Magazine, Spring–Summer 2017. The online version is an extended edit of the print publication. Benn Northover also participated in the interview.
See Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running, exhibition catalog, edited by Inesa Brasiske, Lukas Brasiskis, and Kelly Taxter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022).
From top: Antanas Sutkus, Jonas Mekas in Semeniškiai, Lithuania, 1971, © Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York / LATGA-A, Vilnius; Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running, The Jewish Museum, New York, February 18–June 5, 2022, installation view, photograph by Dario Lasagni; Michel Auder (left), Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol at the opening of Anthology Film Archives, November 30th, 1970, photograph by Mike Chkirin; Jonas Mekas, Walden, circa 1966, film strip, courtesy and © the Estate of Jonas Mekas; Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running, The Jewish Museum, installation views (2), photographs by Dario Lasagni; Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono, and John Lennon at Anthology Film Archives’ Invisible Cinema, designed by Peter Kubelka, photograph by Gretchen Berg, courtesy and © the photographer and the Estate of Jonas Mekas; Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running exhibition catalog (2022), cover image courtesy and © Yale University Press.
