Vital Signs at the Museum of Modern Art

A poet, jazz musician, and artist, Joans used perforated, accordion-folded printer paper as a readymade support for a vast iteration of the exquisite corpse game first made famous by European Surrealists in the 1920s. Carrying the folded work by hand during decades of travel across continents, Joans invited 132 “dream people”— visionary artists and writers with whom he felt a special affinity—to participate. Each participant added a single drawing, starting from the edge of the work of the person before them and without seeing the prior sequence until their new contribution was complete. Generating surprising connections between disparate artists, Long Distance crosses geographic and artistic boundaries.

Ted Joans Jazz is My Religion 

I am a Black American, born poor, I lived in the ghettos and I was lucky enough to survive. I chose Surrealism when I was very young, before I even knew what it was. I felt there was a camaraderie like that which I found in Jazz. It was the only thing that seemed to disturb the powers that dominated me. I was born a black flower and therefore revolutionary in spite of my insignificant person.... I use my senses exercised by Surrealism.... I am Maldoror, Malcolm X, the Marquis de Sade, Breton, Lumumba, and many others still, so many that you cannot know them all. They are my fuel, my endurance, and I will continue to use all the means to win my freedom, which will become freedom for all. Black Power is a means to achieve this freedom.

Ted Joans, "Black Flower", L'archibras (1968)

Ted Joans New York Magazine by Jack Denton