Flora, fauna, familiars, and folklores in They Come to Us without a Word

Celia Shaheen

Advisor: Dr. Ann Reynolds

Abstract

Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York) is an innovator of video and performance art whose work often involves the use of video, performance, installation, drawing, sound, and text. This thesis looks specifically at four videos in Jonas’ 2015 work, They Come to Us without a Word, that use fragments of Cape Breton ghost stories to form a continuous narrative throughout the installation. This complex work wascreated by Jonas for the five-gallery U.S. Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, and includes six other videos, many drawings, sculptures, and other objects that act as stage props and artifacts.

These ghosts in They Come to Us without a Word are not mere haunts, nor wanderers—they are a framework or foundation, a looping structure of interlocking threads. In this work, ghosts act as material, aural, and philosophical metaphors for the medium of video, climate change, and relationships between human, non-human, and spectral bodies. Looking through a fractal lens of art history, folklore studies, ecology, and feminist posthumanist thought, this paper argues for the presence of ghosts beyond the network of Cape Breton folktales that populate the four videos; that these oral histories are one of many vehicles for specters to travel across videos, time, and space in Jonas’ installation.