To Petrarca Who Walked over The Hills of Provence

To Petrarca, Who Walked over the Hills of Provence constitutes a sound diary of 51 fragments, recorded on different occasions. It echoes the ‘diary film’, a genre shaped by Mekas himself, and based on the absence of production means, without adaptation of the subject, of time, of place. Jonas Mekas is best known for his subjective/documentary-like recordings of his everyday life, often in not-so-everyday situations, surrounded with famous artists and friends. His filmic work, often silent, transcends the simple recordings by a very intuitive, musical way of editing. On the contrary, in his recent ‘film’, there are no images, just a collage of sounds. They come from various periods, from the sixties to the present, and they are a mixture of the personal and the political. From cow bells in the Alps to a Japanese monk sweeping his brush in Kyoto. From sounds during the funeral of Andy Warhol to sounds of the infamous day 9/11. From the sound of his own Bolex camera to sounds from the NY subway, while Jonas Mekas and Peter Kubelka recite Vogelweide. To Petrarca_ was first presented at the exhibition ‘A Camera for Jonas’, in the summer of 2003 in Paris.