To Petrarca
Jonas Mekas, 2010
To Petrarca is a plural and unprecedented artistic project by Jonas Mekas. A double gesture, it includes a sound piece on CD, composed for the Atelier de création radiophonique of France Culture in 2003 and conceived as a retrospective intimate diary drawn from his personal archives, which he extends here with drawings, photographs and texts in the space of the book.
Like the “filmed diary” of which he is the inventor, he invites us here on a long autobiographical journey, to be looked at as much as listened to.
A leading figure of American underground cinema, Jonas Mekas (born in 1922 in Lithuania) has lived in the United States since 1949, where he began keeping a filmed diary (‘Walden’, ‘Lost Lost Lost’, ‘Scenes from the life of Andy Warhol’, etc .). In 1955 he founded the magazine ‘Film Culture’, and from 1958 to 1976 he wrote a column in the ‘Village Voice’ in which he ardently defended underground cinema, which he did more than anyone to unite, organise and make known throughout the world. While continuing to pursue a body of written work, he currently directs Anthology Film Archives, the New York cinematheque devoted to avant-garde cinema.
The ZagZig collection at éditions Dis Voir, directed by Philippe Langlois & Frank Smith, producers of the programme Atelier de création radiophonique on France Culture, follows in the wake of this laboratory of sound experimentation, which confronts artistic practice in all its forms with radiophonic writing.
The aim of this unprecedented editorial space is, by a movement of translation, to give works an existence beyond their broadcast on the airwaves, in the form of books/discs conceived with the artists so as to create genuine plastic objects.
The sound piece To Petrarca, free CD included, is a commission from the Atelier de création radiophonique (ACR) of France Culture, produced with the support of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, as part of a public commission.
It was broadcast on 29 June 2003.
Jonas Mekas exhibition, Galerie du jour – Agnès b, from 16 May to 10 June 2009 www.galeriedujour.com
Jonas Mekas is a guest of the Festival du Film Court in Pantin (10 to 20 June 2009). www.cotecourt.org