Jon Jost is a veteran film and video-maker, having made his first work in 1963 in Casina Amata, Paderno Dugnano (Milano), Italy. Since then he’s worked continuously, making some 30+ feature length works, more than thirty short films, several installations, along with painting, writing, and playing-composing music (C&W). While his films are screened regularly in major festivals and small ones too, they fail almost all criteria for the present day “market economy” value system, and are more or less not shown outside the festival circuit. You can read about these films and if you want to, order DVDs of them at www.jon-jost.com.
An inveterate traveler, Jon has lived since 1962 in Chicago, San Francisco, Ben Lomond, Los Angeles, Leucadia (Ca.); Cottage Grove (OR), Kalispell, Butte (MT), Berlin, London, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, New York City, Portland, and Lincoln NE. He presently lives with his wife, Marcella (from Matera, Italy), in Seoul, Korea, where he is in the third year of his first ever real job, teaching as a Professor at Yonsei University. To him it seems unreal….
If you want more info, go to www.jon-jost.com and check biography and filmography there.
4 Comments
Hi Jon,
I just read your comment on the NYT regarding Errol Morris’ Vermeer article, wherein you raised a point about the “red hat” and “girl with flute” in the National Gallery.
One of my former professors (Ben Binstock at Cooper Union) just published a book called “Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery and the Unknown Apprentice”, which makes a pretty audacious yet convincing claim about these and several other “Vermeers”.
Here’s link to the book’s web page:
http://www.vermeersfamilysecrets.com/
-Feliz Solomon
I find your blog very interesting. I loved your film ” All the Vermeers of New York” Keep up the great work.
Dear Mr. J. Jost,
I stay in Karlsruhe, Germany. Last week opened at the ZKM, which is based here, a new exhibition with a work you did in 2000-02, titeld: Trinity, an Altar piece. Can you give me same information about it, It´s realy beautiful!
Sincerely
Claudia Pohl
Hi – I’m glad you liked it. The ZKM didn’t let me know they were putting it back up – I must write them. I hope it was installed somewhat better than the first time around when it was too small, too high up and other things. I’m not sure what I can tell you about it. I’d lived in Rome some time, and visited many churches (for the art – I am not in the usual sense “religious”), and clearly Trinity was influenced by my look at many altar pieces. It is willfully organized as one, both formally in the panels, in the cross layout of having two screens perpendicular to the 5 screens on the walls, and then temporally it is the “passion” sequence – Gethsemane, Golgotha, the Ascension and the Assumption, in that order, and the tonality of the work tuned to those ideas. Aside from the “word” an”big Bang sequences, all the visual material was generated from a single one minute and some seconds long shot, reworking it on computer with standard video processing. Nothing is repeated, every frame is different from all others. If you want more drop me a line at my website address http://www.jon-jost.com Best jon