Mirror Piece I & II

Joan Jonas is a pioneering performance and video artist. She considers herself above all a sculptor, and her interest is in the relationship with space, through the body, the object, movement, and sound. In recent years she has developed her work around questions of biodiversity, ecology, the oceans, and the creatures that live in them.
In Mirror Piece I & II, 15 performers face the audience wearing mirrors and Plexiglas plates in synchronised, choreographed movements. The audience, the performers, and the environment are reflected and fragmented in the moving mirrors, blurring the distinction between viewers and performers. According to the artist, “The mirror was a metaphor for me. A device for altering
the image and including the audience as a reflection, making them uncomfortable when they see themselves in public.”
Mirror Piece I & II, created in 1969-1970, were not filmed at the time. For its exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2018, the performance was updated and reconstructed from notes and photographs by Jonas and Nefeli Skarmea as movement director. Skarmea lives in Geneva and collaborated on the first Dance First Think Later in 2020. Her role in the current life of this historic performance has motivated and made possible the Geneva version of Mirror Piece, which will be performed by HEAD students.