Admission $3.50*

Jonas' primary concerns have always been visual. Influenced by a wide range of materials and attitudes she has remained, since her earliest performance works in the late sixties, concerned with the audience's perception of space. In this 1976 work, Mirage, Jonas uses many of the props and activities which had by this time become familiar elements in her work. As Ingrid Weigand noted in a Soho Weekly News review of the work's premiere at Anthology Film Archives, “Mirage relie(s) heavily on sound - on hoarse whispers and angry shouts into long metal cones, on song, on dogs barking; on video works that created ambiguous image spaces, sometimes by using vertical roll; and Jonas herself making gestures, performing acts and assuming body postures full of unarticulated significance.” The use of the cone-form as a metaphor and as a formal device for altering, directing, and amplifying sound is central in Jonas' later works as well. (See Funnel, May 23 & 24.)

Mirage was initially produced in relation to the Wooster Street space of the Anthology Film Archives in New York, a space not unlike the space of the Museum Theater, and further similar in its use for the presentation of film and video. Jonas produces drawings throughout this performance creating what she has termed “emblems that draw the audience into participation wth a private language.” These “emblems” also take the form of a series of dances and gestures which also convey aspects of this private language.