Joan Jonas - "Vertical Roll"

Jonas’ piece of video art consists entirely of an interrupted electronic signal causing televised black and white images of a woman to roll relentlessly across the TV screen, whilst accompanied by the "jarring" and monotonous noise of her banging a spoon against the camera lens.
This repetitive and fragmented stream of images appears to show various parts of a female body under the scrutiny of the video, thus could be said as being deconstructive of the female form as a whole and may well be an attempt to further disorientate perceptions of the human body.

It has been said that Jonas “Constructs a theatre of female identity by deconstructing representations of the female body and the technology of video” (http://www.eai.org/eai/tape.jsp). By placing it within a new framework she is able to fracture the image and allow the spectator to discover the female form in a in a different and quite intimidating manner. This may be an attempt to encourage an interactivity between the specator and the tape to help them create individual opinions and arguements concerning the treatment of women within the media and perhaps even society today. This becomes particularly poigniant and confrontational when the female looks directlty at the viewer at the end of the sequence.

The images of the woman are also seen to be disorientated and unclear, which could be viewed by some as quite frightening and distressing. The fact that they constantly haunt the screen for the entire 19 minutes and 38 seconds, and roll to the threatening beat may frustrate and perhaps unnerve the viewer. It could even cause them to feel a sense of helplessness towards the women who appears to be trapped at the mercy of the videotape. This to me, once more reveals the instability of the female’s identity and how vulnerable she is to the manipulation of the media and its many forms.