Monday April 27, 7pm
Jonas Mekas
365 Day Project: Part Four “April”
screening in 12 parts January to December 2015
artist in person – pizza break at mid-point!
admission $6 – free for Members
Still from Day 109 (Jonas Mekas, “365 Day Project”, 2007)
Spring finally arrives for “APRIL” as the 12-part monthly screening premiere of Jonas Mekas’s “365 Day Project” continues at Microscope. Over Days 91-121, Mekas captures the moods of the “cruelest month”, considering deaths and resurrections, darkness and light, music and dance, rain and blossoming flowers.
The works in this section find Mekas most often at home in New York, with visits to Los Angeles, Paris, Avignon, Turin as his lens records his daily life with family and friends including:
Yoko Ono memorializing Nam June Paik at the Guggenheim; spontaneous recitations of Dante and Giordano Bruno at the Mars Bar by Sebastian and Zevola; Harmony Korine’s surprise announcement that he is engaged; a book released party and family gathering with his brother Adolfas; concerts by Cat Power, John Zorn, Now We Are Here Band (w/ Mekas), and Patti Smith & Phillip Glass; and conversations with artists and filmmakers Kenneth Anger, Dominique Dubosc, Marina Goldovskaya, Peter Hutton, Peter Kubelka (from the top of the Chrysler Building), Hiro Murikama, Jeffrey Perkins, Peter Sempel and Harry Smith among others.
“Every day of the year 2007 I placed on my website one new video usually about three to ten minutes in length. By the time the project ended, I had made 38 hours of completed video works, the equivalent of twenty feature films… It was the most challenging undertaking I had ever done. The videos deal with my life in Brooklyn and my many travels of that year. It’s personal and anthropological (impersonal) at the same time. During my travels I relied a lot on technical and other help from The Gang (Benn Northover, Sebastian Mekas — I travel most of the time with The Gang) and Elle Burchill was always ready at my Brooklyn station. You’ll see a lot of me and my friends, various daily activities, gettings together, a lot of music, and a lot of events around New York and Europe that year. The main challenge was to record it and share it immediately with many friends all over the world. Today I still do the same, but not daily, with less pressure, on my website www.jonasmekas.com” – Jonas Mekas
The videos in the “365 Day Project” were made available for download and playable on smartphones at a time when Facebook had just been made publicly accessible, Youtube had just been acquired by Google, and the first iPhone was about to be released later that year. The videos range from 30 seconds to 30 minutes.
Selections from the “365 Day Project” will be on view at the Internet Pavillion, Venice Italy from May 7 to November 22. The work has previously been presented in its complete form as an installation (playing on 12 or 52 monitors) at ZKM, Karlsruhe (Germany); Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Russia); galerie du jour, Paris (France) and 2B Gallery, Budapest (Hungary).
Running time: approx. 3 hours
Audience may enter and exit at any time
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Stills from Day 93 and Day 96 (Jonas Mekas, “365 Day Project”, 2007)
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Jonas Mekas was born in 1922 in Semeniškiai, Lithuania and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Mekas was brought to the US along with his brother Adolfas in 1949 by the UN Refugee Organization. Within weeks, Mekas borrowed money to buy his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of his life. Mekas is now among the most influential makers of avant-garde film and a master of the diaristic form.
His works are shown regularly in the US and internationally including recent solo exhibitions at KZM Karlsruhe, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Stadmuseum Weisbaden in Germany; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Centre Pompidou, Paris; James Fuentes Gallery, NY; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague; MUAC, Mexico City; Krinzinger Projekte Vienna; National Museum of Art, Washington, DC. Mekas’ works have also previously exhibited at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MoMA PS1, Queens; Documenta, Kassel, Galerie Du Jour, Paris; Venice Biennale, Venice; among many others.
Mekas has also published more than 20 books of prose and poetry, which have been translated into over 12 languages. He was co-founder of the influential Film Culture magazine and wrote his “Movie Journal” column at the Village Voice for 20 years. He also founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1962, and in 1964 the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives. Both are still operating under the original mission today.
Stills from Day 116 and Day 115 (Jonas Mekas, “365 Day Project”, 2007)
