With the Earth at My Waistline

27 minutes 57 seconds

With the Earth at My Waistline is a new short video work by Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas for Danspace Project’s Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience. The digital premiere was followed by a live discussion between Otake and Jonas. The film and recorded conversation will be available for viewing from July 1 – Aug 31.

Danspace director and curator of Platform 2021 Judy Hussie-Taylor describes the piece as "the magical juxtapositions of the entangled absurdity, playfulness, melancholy, and reverie with many surprises in movement, image, and interactions. The piece can be seen as a pandemic dreamscape or pandemic poetics.”

"Its marvelously layered visual impact unfolds as the two women, occasionally joined by Iris McCloughan and Ms. Jonas's pet poodle, come and go, sometimes as if emerging from projected video footage by Ms. Jonas that features striking outdoor sites in Nova Scotia. In an atmosphere alternately dreamlike and matter-of-fact, With the Earth reveals its two main characters, white-haired Ms. Jonas and black-haired Ms. Otake, moving independently, sometimes in eerie coordination with themselves on film. They take up and manipulate select objects, chosen by Ms. Jonas, while passing through a world of expansive projections and specially set areas of the church, all worlds of their own."
—Robert Greskovic, The Wall Street Journal