The Poetics of Analogital – segue, surface, trace and social space
Presentation by Jennifer West featuring One Mile Parkour Film
Photograph by Liz Ligon
On Thursday, September 13th Jennifer West created a day-long performance adhering a one-mile-long filmstrip to the entire length of the High Line for one day. Visitors were invited to walk on, touch, draw, dance, and alter the filmstrip, which consisted of images filmed by West of locations on and around the High Line. Elementary school children performed a dance on the film, and visitors could use crayons, inkpads, and sharpies, to alter sections of the material.
Three Parkour performers – known for their ability to do flips, jumps, and handstands spontaneously in urban environments and rooftops – performed on the High Line under The Standard, New York. West filmed two of the Parkour performers in June and the resulting images were featured in the filmstrip along the park.
West then took the film back to her Los Angeles studio where she turned the altered filmstrip into a high definition digital format video entitled One Mile Parkour Film. Jennifer West is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is known for her digitized films that are made by hand manipulating film celluloid. She has produced over 50 films since she started working this way in 2004. Wendy Vogel writes for Artforum.com, “Like her experimental predecessors, West forgoes narrative cohesion in favor of creating jumpy cuts and abstract visual collages––splicing, rolling, and drenching the celluloid using materials from Mylar tape to pickle juice, whiskey to candle smoke.”