Jonas Mekas
LITHUANIA AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE USSR, 2009
Courtesy of Jonas Mekas Studio ©
This video is made up of footage that I took with my Sony from the television newscasts during the collapse of the USSR, with the home noises in the background.
It’s a capsule record of what happened and how it happened during that crucial period as recorded by the television newscasters.
It can be also viewed as a classic Greek drama in which the destinies of nations are changed drastically by the unbending, boarding on irrational, will of one single man, one small nation determined to regain its freedom, backed by olympus in its fight against the Might & Power, against the Impossible.
J. M.
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Jonas Mekas was drawn to the four-channel installation format – his “quartets,” as he called them – in the early 2000s as he began to explore multi-monitor presentations of materials from his vast film and video archives. They have been exhibited at galleries and museums around the world, including the New Museum; the Serpentine Gallery, London; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the MMCA, Seoul.
A new quartet will be shown each week of October.
