Vertical Roll

Vertical Roll is a 1972 video art piece by American video and performance artist Joan Jonas. Shot in her New York City studio, Vertical Roll features Jonas' alter-ego Organic Honey performing a series of actions in a series of costumes, mediated by the intentional use of a common televisual malfunction for which the piece is titled, the vertical roll. Cast as an “electronic erotic seductress,” the multiple costumes and roles performed by Jonas critically examine the ever-changing, but consistently unequal roles of women. The camera gazes at Jonas, implicating the viewer in the work and further, with her body. Her intentional de-synchronization of the monitor's receiving and transmitting frequencies results in the on-screen image's repeated vertical descent. Creating a sense of fragmentation, the vertical roll relentlessly pounds at the images of the artist as she moves through a series of performed identities. Characterized a "disjunctive self portrait" by the Electronic Arts Intermix, the image content of the work is strongly mediated by the mirror-like function of the camera, scrutinized by the lens and subjected to violence by the vertical roll.