Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs. Philip Mallory Jones, 2019, slide seq.
Etudes & Riffs: Selected Works by Philip Mallory Jones is streaming online for free from May 21 - June 17.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and Maysles Documentary Center are pleased to present Etudes & Riffs: Selected Works by Philip Mallory Jones, a career-spanning survey of videos by media artist Philip Mallory Jones. Ranging from impressionistic portraits of Black American life, experimental videos made abroad in Burkina Faso and Angola, to his recent 3D reconstruction of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood circa 1940, these works display Jones’s idiosyncratic approach to technological innovation and ongoing inquiry into the roots and branches of the African diaspora.
For over five decades, Jones has experimented with the possibilities of emerging video technologies. He co-founded and directed Ithaca Video Projects (1971-84), a collectively-run media arts center, and the Ithaca Video Festival (1974-84). Utilizing a wide array of tools including film and video animation, the CD-ROM and optical disc, the online virtual world Second Life, 3D modeling software, and the game development engine Unity, Jones has forged an oeuvre as varied in its visual splendor as in its ideas of place, history, and identity.
This program is part of a series of initiatives organized around the 50th anniversary of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), a leading resource for video and media art. Learn more about the celebration of this milestone here, which includes semi-weekly video features and a forthcoming oral history with Jones about his life and work.
Works streaming virtually include:
No Crystal Stair (Philip Mallory Jones & Gunilla Mallory Jones, 1976, 6 min)
This video includes excerpts of No Crystal Stair, which takes its title from Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son.” Short vignettes offer glimpses of Black American cultural life from across the 20th century, including Hughes’ poetry, Southern harmonica playing, Art Tatum, Charles Mingus, and choreography by Blondell Cummings.
The Trouble I’ve Seen (Philip Mallory Jones & Gunilla Mallory Jones, 1976, 6 min)
Termed "a bicentennial ode" by Philip Mallory Jones, The Trouble I've Seen
is a portrait of Black rural Georgia, shot in three communities (Woodstock, Jonesboro and Crawfordville) in the hills around Atlanta. The video developed from a field recording project by the artist’s mother, Dorothy Mallory Jones, who travelled Southern back roads to gather memories of the Black American experience reaching back to the late 19th century. Merging oral and visual history, Jones underscores and contextualizes the political and economic realities of African-Americans in the rural South. Recording the everyday life and work of the people, he allows the interplay between image and sound to add emotional resonance. The music — ragtime compositions and a cappella spirituals — provides a counterpoint to the often poignant images and the subjects' voiceover commentaries.
Wassa (1989, 3:25 min)
Shot in Burkina Faso, Wassa, which translates “come out and play”in Wolof, is a transcultural music video that unfolds with lush imagery and the evocative music of Moustapha Thiombiano. Jones creates a dreamlike vision, capturing the vibrancy and sensuality of the everyday. This rhythmically textured work is part of his exploration of African diaspora culture through nonverbal storytelling and a transcultural language of sound and image construction — the development of codes based on what Jones terms "emotional progressions and an African sensorium."
Jembe (1989, 3:18 min)
In Jembe, Jones transposes African visual motifs and image construction to the electronic medium. Vibrant images, rendered as abstracted electronic color and form, are fused with the dynamic music of Coulibaly Aboubacar. This vivid, impressionistic piece explores the development of codes based on what Jones terms "emotional progressions and an African sensorium," without dependence on specific language comprehension.
Dreamkeeper (1990, 5 min)
A document of the artist's three-channel audio/video installation of the same title, Dreamkeeper is the second part of Jones' ongoing transcultural dialogue, a commentary on the emerging global African diaspora culture. Here he uses a drum to signify the link among diaspora peoples, stating, "The drum, the sound, is the translator of the unseen, to guide the seeker." Using footage and ambient sounds recorded in Angola and Burkina Faso, he explores what he terms a "narrative structure based on emotional progressions." Dreamkeeper continues Jones' search for images and sounds that speak to African diaspora cultures throughout the world. The drummers and music in the tape are indigenous to Bobo-Diolaso, Burkina Faso, West Africa.
Paradigm Shift (1992, 1 min)
A lyrical meditation, Paradigm Shift was created as part of "TRANS-VOICES", an international multi-media public art project that was conceived to reflect a broad spectrum of cultural diversity — national, racial, and ethnic — that characterizes both France and America today. Created by seven American and seven French artists, the video spots operate as trans-cultural investigations, questioning the validity of national identity, exploring the origins of cultural ideology, and charging the ethics of government entities. The spots communicate messages about the fundamental social, political, economic and ecological shifts that mark the close of the 20th century.
Produced by the American Center, Paris, in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Public Art Fund.
First World Order (1994, 27 min)
In this tapestry of images and sounds, fragments gleaned from more than three years of research on four continents illuminate an ancient community of perceptions, practices, and values. Originating in Africa, thousands of years before Egypt, remnants of the First World Order survive today as codes and symbolic language in the arts and life of many people. Weaving verité sequences of arts and cultural expression with interviews and animation, Jones evokes the textured relationships of culturally and ethnically distinct and disparate peoples.
Narration: Renee Brooks. Co-Director: Carlos De Jesus. Assistant Director: Patricia J. Clark. Videography: Thomas Allen Harris, Carlos De Jesus, Philip Mallory Jones, Indu Krishnan. Audio Composition: Life Garden, Peter Regan, David Oliphant, Richard Salem. Choir: National Dance Theatre Co. of Jamaica.
First World Order is a presentation of the Independent Television Services (ITVS)
Mirrors & Smoke (1999, 3 min), CD-ROM
Mirrors & Smoke: A Non-Linear Performance In Virtual Space developed from a collaboration between Jones, choreographer and dancer Ralph Lemon, composer John D. Mitchell, and digital artist and scholar Katherine Milton. Building from journals kept by Lemon in his travels in Haiti, West Africa, and India and videotapes of Lemon performing in various locations, Jones and Milton designed evocative 3D environments. This video excerpts the navigation of an interactive CD-ROM, allowing the viewer to explore the performance in any order.
In the Sweet Bye & Bye (2007, 3:44 min)
This video documents In the Sweet Bye & Bye, a 3D exhibition built in the on-line virtual world Second Life. Bye & Bye takes ideas and materials from the book Lissen Here!, a collaboration between the artist and his mother, Dorothy Mallory Jones. Jones writes: “The narrative threads and paths are discovered in the overlap of images and texts, and in the compositions of planes and angles that form/transform as the avatar POV shifts. The narratives are on three levels – personal/family anecdote, communal lore, and allegory.”
Paragon Show Lounge (2008, 1:55 min), Second Life
Paragon Show Lounge is an early example of Jones’ meticulous reconstructions of the environments of Black life in interwar Chicago, a project that has been the core of his practice for over a decade. This video depicts the Paragon Show Lounge, a 3D space built in Second Life that harkens back to the jazz and blues clubs of the ‘20s and ‘30s, set to music by Junior Walker and The All-Stars.
Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs (slide seq, 2019)*
These digital slides were designed in 3D modelling software and developed as stand-alone fine arts prints and in graphic book form. Writes Jones: “Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs is inspired by the lore and legends, the heroes and scoundrels of South Side Chicago between the World Wars. It is wisdom, passed down through generations. It is research in African American press archives, original oral histories and memories, real and imagined. It is a fine art portfolio, inspired by our forebears, the creators of the Black Metropolis and the Chicago Renaissance – ancestors who were compelled by the great migration yet persevered and sometimes thrived in spite of the Great Depression and Jim Crow segregation.”
On Thursday, May 20 at 7PM EDT we hosted an online screening of a selection of these films followed by a conversation between Philip Mallory Jones and scholar Patricia R. Zimmerman.
Additionally, from May 20 to June 10, Bronzeville Etudes & Riffs by Philip Mallory Jones looped silently in the Maysles Documentary Center window, as part of our Sidewalk Cinema. We invite you to stop by at any time to view this work.
