The catalogue of the Irish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennal presents a video project by Jones in which Korean actors reenact a 1970s documentrary of a “conflict resolution therapy session” with individuals who experienced the conflict in Northern Ireland.
Jesse Jones's 2013 film The Other North represents the culmination of her research in South Korea and the Demilitarized Zone. It features Korean actors reenacting The Steel Shutter, a little-known documentary of a “conflict resolution therapy session” held by American psychologist Carl Rogers in the early 1970s with a group of individuals from various political and socioeconomic backgrounds in Northern Ireland. Here, fact and fiction press up against each other and the conflict of one North is reinscribed in another. The impossible, and perhaps improper, conflation of the traumatic histories of North Korea and Northern Ireland creates an uncomfortable strangeness, albeit one that carries the potential for deeper understanding.
This publication is released on the occasion of Jones's solo exhibition in the Irish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, which features The Other North and other recent films. It includes excerpts from the script (in English and Korean), a critical essay by Declan Long, and the transcript of a symposium featuring Jones, Eamonn McCann, MOUTH, Kyong Hee Lee, and Emer Roberts, held during the 2013 exhibition of The Other North at CCA Derry~Londonderry.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Irish Pavilion at the 57th International Exhibition of visual arts – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 13 to November 26, 2017.
The practice of Jesse Jones (born 1978 in Dublin, where she lives and works) crosses the media of film, performance and installation. Often working through collaborative structures, she has been exploring how historical instances of communal culture may hold resonance in our current social and political experiences. Jones' practice is multi-platform, working in film installation, performance and sculpture. Her recent work has examined how political movements and ideas might be expanded to institutional, performative gestures.
