PLASMA Presents: Art Jones, Video Art and Performance

Monday, April 4th, the Department of Media Study's PLASMA (Performances, Lectures, And Screenings in Media Art)​ will feature an online video performance by ART JONES entitled "Science for Disease Culture." The Zoom Meeting ID for the lecture/performance series is 939 5189 1859. Email paigesar@buffalo with PLASMA2022 in the subject line for the password.​ 

ART JONES works with moving images, photography, sound, and objects. Jones often uses original and found media as raw material to be sampled and re-combined in order to examine implicit cultural meanings or suggest new ones. Jones' films and media art projects and performances have been presented at international and national institutions including Chinatown Soup in New York City, Times Art Center Berlin, Roulette Intermedium, and Mana Contemporary Art. Most recently, an exhibition at the Herter Art Gallery at UMASS Amherst featured work drawn from his 30-year career. Laura McGough, curator of that 2021 exhibition and DMS PhD ‘17, writes: “Working across film, video, live media performance, and 3-D printed sculptures, Jones explores how social information is both transmitted and received. Experimentation with traditional media forms through the manipulation of image, sound, text, and data is a key component of his explorations. In the early 1990s, Jones developed a unique visual hip hop aesthetic that translated the aural qualities of rap music to moving images .. and introduced video noise, rapid-fire repetitive editing, and image distortion to the traditional documentary format.”

For PLASMA, Jones will perform “Science for Disease Culture” – a live video remix performance. Jones’ title refers to a passage in Rammellzee’s Iconic Treatise on Gothic Futurism (1979) that reads: “The Roman letter type and others have been armed to assassinate and/or abolish this supreme symbol known as infinity sign by removing the x from this written structure. This is symbolic war using slang and tonics to understand the very outline structure that makes a through z its mathematics and science for disease culture to understand the consequences of structure that have been disease culturally sabotaged and trickknowledged." 

Brief remarks addressed to the students who are enrolled in PLASMA as a course will begin at 6:00 PM sharp. ART JONES' performance will begin at 6:15 pm EST.

As always, PLASMA lectures are free and open to the UB community and the public.​ 

PLASMA is sponsored by the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study and funding is provided by the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. The series is curated by Dr. Paige Sarlin, Assistant Professor of Media Study, in collaboration with Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center.