Moving Off the Land follows the development of the eminent artist Joan Jonas’s performance work Moving Off the Land (2016–20). This body of work spans three years of research into the significance of the ocean throughout history as a totemic spiritual and cultural reference. Jonas conjures an aquatic universe of mythological and real figures, where new stories of great beauty and ecological urgency emerge. The full script of the performance, along with the artist’s notes on it, form the core of the book, accompanied by mesmerizing images of Jonas’s live performances.
Edited by Ute Meta Bauer, curator of Jonas’s acclaimed presentation at the US Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, this 272-page, lavishly illustrated publication includes a rich selection of research materials that Jonas collected over many years, a comprehensive chronology of the project’s history, and an extensive conversation between Jonas, Bauer, and curator Stefanie Hessler that reveals the genesis of the project and how the artist explores environmental concerns while highlighting the intelligence, wonder, and beauty of the nonhuman creatures that cohabit our world. Introductions by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza and Markus Reymann frame the project within the research practice of TBA21 and TBA21-Academy.
Co-published by TBA21-Academy and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.
