IT WOULD BE DISINGENUOUS to say that Joan Jonas is not a performance artist, but I don’t think of her that way. When she started in the 1960s, she sought bare land for building; these neighborhoods expanded around her only much later. She goes outside, generally.
Jonas’s newest work, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, 2005, was commissioned by Dia:Beacon, and premiered there last year, with a reprise this past October. It tells stories, it’s representational, but, as with many aspects of her work, this is deceptive. Not cunningly so, but in the way of distances: You’re fooled easiest if