Sunday September, 7pm
Jonas Mekas
365 Day Project: Part Nine “September”
artist in person – pizza break at mid-point!
admission $7 – Free-for-Members
Interview with Jonas Mekas about the project in Studio International HERE
Still from “September 12th” (365 Day Project, Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
As we enter our 2015-16 Season of our Event Series, we are pleased to continue the ongoing monthly screening premiere of Jonas Mekas’ “365 Day Project” (2007). “September” begins with Jonas at his make-shift animation table preparing the title dates for the month’s 30 videos to the music of Cyndi Lauper. Work, or rather work as life, a recurring theme in the artist’s work, is evident throughout the month with Mekas not only as filmmaker but also as musician – at a Swiss jazz festival – and as performer – on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Antonin Artaud at Anthology Film Archives.
The institution that he founded is also the setting for many of the month’s videos including conversations with Zoe Lund about her numerous pet rats, with Michel Auder and Jackie Raynal about Godard and Goethe, and with Maxi the cat, who is featured in four of the videos after falling seriously ill that month.
Mekas’ reflections shift between present and past, Europe and the US, Manhattan and Brooklyn and feature rare footage of September 11, 2001 shot from the artist’s then SoHo roof, of Peter Kubelka smoking a cigar in 1990s Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy, of the then current solo exhibition of Shigeko Kubuta in Chelsea, and a night at his Brooklyn loft where he tells the story of his visit to Fatima, Portugal over a burning candle he brought home from there decades earlier.
Mekas also enjoys the last day of summer along the Williamsburg riverfront (before the high-rise condos) and the first day of autumn, walking through the already falling leaves in Greenpoint’s McGolrick Park.
Running time: approx. 3 hours
Audience may enter and exit at any time.
Still from “September 5th” (Zoe Lund) (365 Day Project, Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
About 365 Day Project:
“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” is currently on view at the Internet Pavillion, Venice Italy through 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).
Still from “September 17th” (Martha Colburn) (365 Day Project, Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
_
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.
Still from “September 13th” (Shigeko Kubota) (365 Day Project, Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
