Chiara Giovando

The Struggle Against Ourselves, Jesse Jones

2011, REDCAT Gallery, Los Angeles, July 1 - August 28

For her first solo exhibition in the U.S., Dublin-based artist Jesse Jones, whose work focuses on the political and social history of cinema, presents a newly commissioned 16mm film titled The Struggle Against Ourselves. Produced in collaboration with students from CalArts' Schools of Film/Video and Theater and commissioned by REDCAT, Jones’ latest project uses the pioneering Russian theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold’s studies in biomechanics as a point of departure. Situated at the intersection of constructivist theater and its eventual appropriation by mass culture à la Busby Berkeley, the new project is presented alongside The Spectre and the Sphere (2008)—a film depicting a ghostly performance of “The Internationale” on a theremin by the great niece of its inventor Lydia Kavina. Brought together at REDCAT for the first time, the works reflect Jones’ desire to retrieve the artifacts of cultural history and revolutionary politics through performance, filmic re-enactment and theatrical staging. Jesse Jones (b. 1978, Dublin) currently lives and works in Dublin, where she received her MA in Visual Arts practices at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in 2005. Her films and videos have been screened and exhibited internationally in such notable exhibitions as the 11th International Istanbul Biennial.  Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Collective, Edinburgh; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; and Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga. 

Curator Clara Kim Producer Chiara Giovando