I attended an event at the film school at which Jennifer
West, an Assistant professor at Roski, screened and talked about her films.
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| Jennifer West |
West started out by taking about a work that she is
currently working on. In it, she wants to include 100 films that have
influenced her. She believes that the ideas and memories created by movies mold
an artist’s psyche. This idea is like that of Sherin’s when she told us in the
class that inspiration could come from anywhere and that the world around us
impacts our art making.
West then began to talk about her process when making films.
She hand manipulates film celluloid with all kinds of materials. She scratches
at the film, drenches it in lemon juice, coffee, lipstick, salt, etc. and does
all kind of other things to the film celluloid. She calls this “direct
film-making” because it is camera-less. However, she also has film that are
image-based and which use a camera.
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| Stills from various films by Jennifer West |
Raising interesting questions about authorship, West does
not create art in expected ways. Sometimes she makes her film a public
performance, and asks viewers to do things to the film, such as drum on it or
skateboard over it. West’s filmmaking is therefore sometimes collaborative, so
there is no singular source of creation, putting the idea of authorship into
question.
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Jennifer West; Skate the Sky Film (35mm film print of clouds in the sky covered with ink, Ho-Hos, and Melon - taped to Tate Turbine Hall ramp and skateboarded over using ollie, kick flip, pop shove-it, acid drop, melon grab, crooked grind, bunny hop, tic tacs, sex change, disco flip - skateboarding performed live for Long Weekend by Thomas Lock, Louis Henderson, Charlotte Brennan, Dion Penman, Sam Griffin, Jak Tonge, Evin Goode and Quantin Paris - clouds in the sky shot by Peter West)
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West’s films question authorship in even more radical ways
in that she sometimes remakes someone else’s work. In one film that she
screened, she manipulated the film celluloid of select scenes from Jaws 2. She
therefore appropriates someone else’s film and makes it her own. According to
West, she does not believe that her new fabrication of these Jaws scenes is
subject to copyright law because she has transformed the original into
something else. That’s a pretty definitive statement, but I think it’s a
difficult line to draw and that the source of authorship in West’s work based
on Jaws 2 is uncertain. Her work reminds me of collage art and its use of
appropriation.
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Jennifer West
Still from
Heavy Metal Sharks Calming Jaws Reversal Film (faded
pink super 8 film print - library copy of select scenes
from Jaws - from Lorain, Ohio public library - treated with black fabric dye enriched with heavy metals: iron and zinc vitamins, celluloid grated with stone, whipped with hair headbanging, impressed with thumb and pinky print
devil ears - headbanging by Monica Kogler and Jwest)
2011
6 minutes, 47 seconds |
West’s work is very conceptual. She says that the final
product is not as important as the idea—the materials she wants to treat the
celluloid with and the content she wishes the film to have. It is therefore the
process and not the artwork that is of importance to West. For example, in one
film she subjected the celluloid to radiation. The result of the film was
unexpected. The film turned out to be slow and relaxing with the celluloid's exposure to radiation. West’s idea was
to expose the celluloid to radiation and thus make something visible, exposure
to radiation, that happens all the time. What she got in the product was an
unintended irony in that her most relaxing film came about by being exposed to
harsh radiation.
Most of the films that West screened were abstract. They
were about layering abstract forms and thus creating movement, vitality and
energy. The result was hypnotic and visceral. When I closed my eyes I could
still see the flashes of the film through my eyelids. Though I admire the
rhythm and movement that West creates through repetition, at times her films
were so repetitive that I felt sleepy. Her films are also so hypnotic that I
felt uncomfortable watching them. It felt almost like mind control.
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| Jennifer West; Regressive Squirty Face Film (16mm film leader squirted and dripped with chocolate sauce ketchup, mayonnaise and apple juice), 2007. |
West’s films, to me, are all about time. The film celluloid
that she uses in the films contains the records of all that she has subjected
the celluloid to. The films are therefore records of time, of process, and thus
freeze time in a way.
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