JOAN JONAS VERTICAL ROLL (1972)

Director: Joan Jonas

Year: 1972

Time: 20 mins

Music: Joan Jonas

Eye of Sound: Vertical Roll is one of those works that seem to surpass their own dimension. For decades, critics have been revisiting this classic video and, much like Persona's Alma when talking to a mute Elizabeth, finding new answers for theoretical problematics that seem to be, before anything else, of their own concern. Which is fine, of course: that's part of the critic's job. But this perhaps excessively theoretical approach has been neglecting aspects that seem vital to Vertical Roll's allure. The piece is structurally very simple: a horizontal strip, resulting from filming a TV set, punctuates transitions between frames to the sound of a hypnotically synched monotonous beat, while Jonas presents excerpts from her Organic Honey theatrical performances. These performances are all structured around the vertical roll that insistently sweeps the screen throughout the piece's 20 minutes, and are mostly framed in a spatially disruptive manner. All such performances seem to have a common theme: they all revolve around common representations of the female body and, therefore, of female sexuality when viewed from the outside, in a continuous flow that seems nauseating for both the performer and the spectator. Such vertigo, nevertheless, appears to derive not so much from the filmed performances but from the performances as they are locked in the film: indeed, the unstopping roll pushing the disjunct images upwards or downwards, synched with a minimal and almost unfloating beat that seems to cause the visual disruption, results in a mind-boggling experience that contorts perception without it being aware of the assault.

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