Joan Jonas’s mesmerizing multimedia performance Moving Off the Land pays tribute to the ocean and its creatures, biodiversity, and delicate ecology. On this exceptional occasion Jonas is joined onstage by the celebrated composer, improviser, and electronic musician Ikue Mori (born 1953, Tokyo) and the performer Francesco Migliaccio (born 1994, Torre del Greco).

Combining movement, live drawing, readings, and video projection, Moving Off the Land draws on literary and mythological sources as well as Jonas’s own collection of sketches and notes. Projected video footage of underwater scenes creates a setting in which multiple layers of gestures, real and imaginary figures, and numerous aquatic beings are brought together. In this 60-minute performance Jonas celebrates the poetics and explores the ecology of the ocean, which she describes as “a poetic, totemic, and natural entity, as a life source and home to a universe of beings.” Readings include excerpts from Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851), naturalist Sy Montgomery’s book The Soul of an Octopus (2015), and marine biologist Rachel Carson’s poetic science writing in The Edge of the Sea (1955).

This performance takes place on the occasion of Jonas’s exhibition Moving Off the Land II, the inaugural project at the newly opened Ocean Space in the revitalized Church of San Lorenzo in Venice. Spearheaded by TBA21–Academy and its network of partners, including universities, NGOs, museums, government agencies, and research institutes from around the world, Ocean Space is a platform catalyzing ocean advocacy, collaboration, and exchange through installations, performances, workshops, archives, and research. Jonas’s installation is the culmination of three years of intensive research in aquariums around the world as well as in the waters off the coast of Jamaica, commissioned by TBA21–Academy and curated by Stefanie Hessler. The exhibition developed out of the performance Moving Off the Land, which was commissioned by TBA21–Academy in 2016 and has since been presented in parallel to the Kochi Biennale in 2016; at Tate Modern, London, in 2018; and at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, San Francisco, in January 2019.