Joan Jonas & Jason Moran: A Lecture Demonstration

Image caption: Joan Jonas and Jason Moran. Modern Working Together: A Lecture Demonstration. 2018. Performance view, Tate Modern, London, 2018. Photo: Lewis Ronald. © 2024 Joan Jonas/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Joan Jonas and Jason Moran: A Lecture Demonstration

Performance

Tues, March 27, 2024 at 7:00 pm

MoMA, Floor T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

Collaboration is a central tenet of Joan Jonas’s career. She has performed for close to twenty years with one of her most crucial collaborators–the celebrated pianist and musician Jason Moran, bringing his improvisational sounds into new performances and installations alike. Their interdisciplinary work together highlights the importance of feedback, improvisation, and music history across generations of artists. 

On the occasion of Joan Jonas: Good Night Good Morning the two present A Lecture Demonstration, a dialogue in which they describe their process and perform excerpts of their works together over the last two decades such as landmark productions Reanimation (2010/2012/2013), The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things (2004), and They Come to Us Without a Word (2015). The work is a video and sonic feedback between the two artists–an unscripted conversation, as the name implies, with Moran at the piano and Jonas on stage performing with images from her archive projected behind the two, props from her studio, and original audio recordings. Using space and sound, the narrative of their practice unfolds, showing years of collaboration, process, and close connection between these two artistic giants.

Organized by Ana Janevski, Curator, with Lilia Rocio Taboada, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance. Produced by Kate Scherer, Senior Manager and Producer, with Nora Chellew, Assistant Performance Coordinator, Performance and Live Programs.

Major support for the exhibition is provided by the Sarah Arison Endowment Fund for Performance and by the Wallis Annenberg Director's Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art.