Moonlanding/Janus Head [Films in Progress]

Having emigrated from Europe in 1968, Maria Lassnig likened her arrival in New York to landing on the moon. Combining found footage of a spacecraft’s arrival on the moon—suggestive of the iconic 1969 televised broadcast of NASA’s Apollo 8 moon landing—with the artist’s own footage, Lassnig conjures the sense of wonder, discovery, and alienation that accompanies new experiences. Sequences of merged faces invoke Janus, the ancient Roman god of beginnings and transitions, to illustrate the thrill and confusion inherent in change. This change is also decidedly technological; Moonlanding/Janus Head emphasizes the televisual medium of the broadcast image and the picture plane...