With the Earth at My Waistline is a new short video work by Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas, commissioned and premiered at Danspace Project for Platform 2021: The Dream of the Audience. The premiere was preceded by a pre-recorded interview between Eiko and Joan and followed by a live discussion between the two. The interview, and post performance conversation can be found below.

On Friday, June 11, 2021, Eiko Otake and Joan Jonas presented With the Earth at My Waistline, created while in-residence at Danspace’s historic venue in St. Mark’s Church.

This film finds two pioneers, relatively new in their friendship and collaborative process, improvising together, building trust, and surprising each other along the way. During her Platform 2021 residency at Danspace Project, movement-based, interdisciplinary artist, Eiko Otake invited performance and video pioneer, Joan Jonas to join her in their first formal collaboration together. In an unprecedented turn, Otake invited Jonas to be the first artist to ever direct her in a performance, all filmed in Danspace’s sanctuary at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

In recent years Otake and Jonas have formed a collaborative friendship (discussed in detail in their 2020 Conversation Without Walls). Both artists create work that engages deeply with its site and experiments with viewership; how the work is experienced and how the viewer experiences themselves within it.

Watch the pre-recorded interview recorded between Eiko and Joan below.

Watch the post performance discussion between Eiko and Joan below.