Monday March 30, 7pm
Jonas Mekas
365 Day Project: Part Three “March”
screening in 12 parts January to December 2015
artist in person – pizza break at mid-point!
admission $6 – free for Members
Day 60 (from 365 Day Project, by Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
Microscope is very pleased to announce the premiere of PART THREE “March” from Jonas Mekas’ “365 Day Project” as the third of a 12-part program, screened at the end of each month, comprising the nearly 38-hour long video project. For the year of 2007, Mekas challenged himself to make and upload a video on his website each day, at times repurposing or incorporating previously unseen footage from his earlier 16mm films and analog videos.
Originally each of the videos, ranging from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, were made available for download and playable on smartphones at a time when Facebook had just been made publicly accessible, Youtube had just been acquired by Google, and the first iPhone was about to be released later that year.
Among the many highlights of Part Three (Days 60 – 90) are Madonna concert at Madison Square Garden, Peter Kubelka playing a Tibetan gong, Jonas seeking “silence please”, a drink with Zoe Lund at the Mars Bar, snowballs, saunas and a dip in a freezing lake in Tampere Finland, and a requiem for a broken tree in Brooklyn.
“Every day of the year 2007 I placed on my website one new video usually about three to ten minutes in length. By the time the project ended, I had made 38 hours of completed video works, the equivalent of twenty feature films… It was the most challenging undertaking I had ever done. The videos deal with my life in Brooklyn and my many travels of that year. It’s personal and anthropological (impersonal) at the same time. During my travels I relied a lot on technical and other help from The Gang (Benn Northover, Sebastian Mekas — I travel most of the time with The Gang) and Elle Burchill was always ready at my Brooklyn station. You’ll see a lot of me and my friends, various daily activities, gettings together, a lot of music, and a lot of events around New York and Europe that year. The main challenge was to record it and share it immediately with many friends all over the world. Today I still do the same, but not daily, with less pressure, on my website www.jonasmekas.com”
– Jonas Mekas
The “365 Day Project” has previously been presented in its complete form as an installation (playing on 12 or 52 monitors) at ZKM, Karlsruhe (Germany); Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Russia); galerie du jour, Paris (France) and 2B Gallery, Budapest (Hungary).
Day 87 (from 365 Day Project, by Jonas Mekas, 2007) – image courtesy of the artist
Microscope gratefully acknowledges the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation as the Official Sponsor of the Event Series
