Jonas Mekas
The Destruction Quartet 2006
10 October - 4 November 2006
INFO@DARRENKNIGHTGALLERY.COM
(New York) Consequence
I was dismayed when Jonas Mekas offered to film my scheduled fire event, (New York) Consequence. Sitting in his office at Anthology Film Archives in April 1991, I tentatively outlined the proposed project when the secretary interrupted to say that John Cage was on the phone. Jonas joked with Cage about the latter’s impending 79th birthday. I sat in silence, admittedly feeling overwhelmed by the realisation that I was suddenly in Mekas' orbit. Jonas bade Cage farewell and resumed our conservation in exactly the same nonchalant manner.
I showed him slides of my recent incendiary event two months earlier in Vilnius, Lithuania. Unwittingly, I had spent three months during the most tumultuous time in that country since WW2. Lithuania had proclaimed independence the previous year, the catalyst for the domino effect collapse of the Soviet Union (this is prefaced in Mekas’ Destruction Quartet by his footage of the Berlin Wall demolition). The consequences of this declaration were calamitous. On January 13th 1991 Soviet paratroopers stormed the television tower and other places of strategic interest. Several people lost their lives, a great many were seriously injured, a military curfew was imposed and there was a transport blockade leaving the country isolated in the middle of a harsh winter.
Throughout this scourge I worked with fellow artists and colleagues outdoors in temperatures of 25 subzero degrees to make an artwork in the courtyard of the Vilnius Art Academy. Of course, pounding the frozen earth, breaking it open, cutting and grinding steel and lighting fires were futile activities. But in such tragic times making art, singing songs and simply working outside somehow seemed like reasonable forms of resistance.
Jonas seemed sympathetic to these experiences but made no comment about my artwork. He didn’tseem overly interested in what I was proposing to do here in New York. All I was hoping was that he might put me contact with a film-making student or camera operator to document the project. Jonas asked when and where the scheduled event was to take place. “Sunday, May 12th 7.30pm. The corner of East 8th Street and Avenue C”, I said. “OK, I’ll do it,” Jonas replied as he scribbled the details down on the back of an envelope. “See you there.”
At that time I was living with my friend the pianist, Barney McAll above a Chinese takeaway on East 15th Street and Avenue B (apparently Charlie Parker had lived in the same apartment at some time). The halcyon days of the East Village were waning and the area was undergoing a process of gentrification which today is complete. Then homelessness and slums were seen against an iconic skyline which has since been reciprocally diminished – also the most indescribably affecting episode of The Destruction Quartet.
The impetus for the proposed event was an attempt to make some sort of sense of this New York polarised by extremes and the dramatic events I had just experienced in Lithuania. It was inspired by a Mekas quote I had read somewhere, “Instead of marching and shouting against things I didn’t like, I decided to try to construct something new, outside the system.” At that time I was listening to Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Butch Morris and reading Benjamin Buchloh’s seminal essay, “Conceptual Art 1962 -1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions”, that appeared in October the previous winter which I now realise informed the work in obvious ways.
I found a rambling abandoned lot where there were shanties built along two edges of leveled rubble and garbage. The vacant block was surrounded by a diverse Hispanic, Afro-American and multi-ethnic mix. I really didn’t expect Jonas to turn up but true to his word, there he was, on time with video camera in hand. I introduced him to Barney, our landlord and my father Antanas before we proceeded to assemble the structure. Meanwhile Jonas filmed the site, its detritus, the surrounds and our activity. I remember him dressed in his brown corduroy jacket simultaneously filming and repetitively throwing a tennis ball to his son Sebastian.
The soon to be immolated structure consisted of twenty four 3 foot square welded steel frames of 2 inch angle iron. These leaned against a 3 foot square plywood cube. The incline of the frames was determined by an even spread from the first which was flush with the box to the last which was nearly horizontal. As the cube burned the frames slowly tilted the box until it yielded and the whole thing folded into the shape of a cross.
Soon after collapse, the crescendo of two fire engine sirens silenced the chimes of a gelati van. Several patrols of unimpressed policemen looked on as New York fire department officers belatedly but right on cue hosed down the smoldering but essentially extinguished work. Throughout, Jonas drifted about, fading into the background while continuing to film the tragi-comic proceedings. The next morning when I returned to clean up all the frames were gone, probably scavenged as material for the homeless shelters there. Now the site is home to a suite of condominiums.
Several days later I met Jonas at his apartment above 491 Broadway in SoHo to collect the video tape footage. It was a memorable evening. We drank wine while he played the accordion for me and I sang a Lithuanian folk song, ‘Šiu nakti per nakti’. Subsequently, I have met Jonas on several occasions. In 1999, again in New York, he attended the Slave Pianos exhibition and concerts at Lombard-Freid Gallery. We drank tequila one afternoon at the Mars Bar where he insisted I carve my name in the wooden bar. I most recently bumped into Jonas at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2003 where a publication of his was being launched. Throughout this time he has stayed in touch, kindly mailing his books of poetry, diaries, memoirs, videos and other material which he reckons might be of interest to me.
I consider the inclusion of (New York) Consequence as part of Mekas’ four monitor video opus as a kind of gift. Until now the work has remained unknown or of no interest to writers, art historians and curators. That Jonas offered to film the event in the first instance was an act of unconditional generosity. Now the way it is framed and re-contextualised alongside Nam June Paik’s piano demolition, the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, I can better understand his methodology; how he operates as a conduit connecting people and histories, how he flows along and retrospectively puts the pieces together but knows what he's doing as he does it. Jonas Mekas’ Destruction Quartet projects my (New York) Consequence into a realm that I could never have imagined.
Danius Kesminas, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, September 2006
Danius Kesminas is an Australian artist who recently uncovered an illegal underground vodka pipeline network in Lithuania