contessanally: Venice: Chiesa di San Lorenzo – Ocean Space - Joan Jonas – Moving Off Land II

Chiesa di San Lorenzo – Ocean Space

Joan Jonas – Moving Off Land II

Ocean Space, is a new collaborative platform for change, initiated by TBA21–Academy, the new embassy for the oceans which will catalyze transdisciplinary research and foster collective action, encouraging audiences to radically reimagine how we see and treat the defining feature of our blue planet. Located in the Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Ocean Space reintegrates the historic building back into the cultural fabric of the city, after two years of conservation and renewal, and more than 100 years of being largely closed to the public.

https://www.tba21.org/#item--JoanJonas--1928

https://www.ocean-space.org/

Chiesa di San Lorenzo – Ocean Space

Joan Jonas – Moving Off Land II

To inaugurate Ocean Space, TBA21–Academy presented an immersive multimedia installation by the acclaimed artist Joan Jonas, the culmination of three years of intensive research and explorations with the nomadic academy. Moving Off the Land II is curated by Stefanie Hessler, on view until September 29.

Joan Jonas – Moving Off Land II - Mirror Pool – Video Still

The opening conference included a conversation between acclaimed artist, Joan Jonas and Dr. Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, moderated by curator Stefanie Hessler; and a discussion between Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, founder and chairperson of TBA21, together with Markus Reymann Co-founder and director.

Ecologist, paleobiologist, and conservationist, Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Sylvia Earle, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, Joan Jonas, Ozu, Markus Reymann, David Hrankovic, CEO, TBA21 and Stefanie Hessler

Chiesa di San Lorenzo – Ocean Space Inaugural Program

Joan Jonas – Moving Off Land II

Joan Jonas’s exhibition “Moving Off the Land II” is the inaugural public project at the Ocean Space. The installation is the culmination of three years of intensive research in aquariums around the world as well as in the waters off the coast of Jamaica, commissioned by TBA21–Academy. Curated by Stefanie Hessler, and on view until September 29, “Moving Off the Land II” unfolds across 500 square meters of what was once the nave of the church of San Lorenzo. The show comprises new video, sculpture, drawing, and sound works, as well as a performance on May 7, centering on the role the oceans have played for cultures throughout history as a totemic, spiritual, and ecological touchstone.

Joan Jonas is one of the most renowned artists of her generation. She is celebrated for her groundbreaking work in performance, installation, and video since the 1960s. At a time when art started leaving the confines of the gallery space, Jonas created work that converged with dance, music, and theater. Ever since, her work has tackled complex questions regarding humans’ relationship with the environment. Jonas represented the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. With this new work, she returns to Venice and revisits some of the themes touched upon in her US Pavilion exhibition “They Come to Us Without a Word”: the natural world and the animals inhabiting it—from bees to fish—as well as the present danger of climate change and extinction.

Joan Jonas and Ozu

Joan Jonas - Moving Off the Land II - 2019, video still - courtesy of the artist and TBA21

Joan Jonas - Moving Off the Land II – 2019 - video still

Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza

Joan Jonas - Moving Off the Land II – 2019

Dr. Sylvia Earle

In Moving Off the Land II, Jonas pays tribute to the oceans and their creatures, biodiversity, and delicate ecology. Her new works dive deep into the ocean water, swim with the fish inhabiting it, and weave in literature and poetry by writers who have homed in on the liquid masses that cover two thirds of the planet. Following the methodology that has gained her lauded reputation, Jonas combines poetry and prose by writers like Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville with texts by Rachel Carson and Sy Montgomery, and with moving images filmed in aquariums and in Jamaica, where algae bloom and overfishing pose urgent threats to the environment.