Joan Jonas uses video TV as an imagemaker and conjures herself. Working alone in the studio with the camera, the TV is her toy and her other. She plays with it and constitutes with it. As a form of play, the TV is a fixation. Fascinated by her image on the monitor, she locks into it. Playing with it, she explores the black and white image, relating it to objects and materials … her accumulated special effects. As a form of constituting, the TV supplies an other. The TV image is an opposite: oneself given back as an other. It suggests one who can become a series of identities, a complexity of associations, a series of images.

As she used it in the studio, the TV was a mediumistic device … a magic and an instructive tool. It allowed for exploration in privacy and for the making of a solo, video tape.