“Saline bodies, water. Buckets, film. Materiality, memory. Erosion, elision. Time, travel. Spiral, Jetty. Salt Lake, Dead Sea. Jennifer West’s fervent materialism is by now well documented—strewn as her films are with materials, which she then indexes in her paragraph-long titles—as are the dialectical relationships she plumbs with awesome hallucinatory fever. Likewise, her films Spiral of Time Documentary Film and Salt Crystals Spiral Jetty Dead Sea Five Year Film (both 2013) materialize—no, metabolize—more of these things. Travelogues in the elliptical way that Tony Conrad’s black painted frames on paper, his seventies-era “Yellow Movies,” were movies, West’s recent films are admixtures of shot images and abstract, material traces, in the acid-y palette that is her signature. But if her previous works conjured the early abstract cinema of Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann, among others, her new works were conceived in spirit with Robert Smithson and Chris Marker, and their poetic, speculative travelogues—sculptural and cinematic, respectively—that were both cosmically and earthily concerned with place and time.” –Quinn Latimer for Vdrome.org, 2015
Salt Crystals Spiral Jetty Dead Sea Five Year Film (70mm film negative floated in the Dead Sea and given a healing clay bath in extreme heat in 2008 - stuffed in a suitcase, placed in studio buckets, covered in clay and salt for five years - dragged along the salt encrusted rocks of the Spiral Jetty and thrown in the pink waters in 2013 in below 10 degree weather - Dead Sea floating and mud baths by Mark Titchner, Karen Russo and Jwest - Spiral Jetty dragging and rolling by Aaron Moulton, Ignacio Uriarte and Jwest - DIY telecine frame by frame of salt covered film by Chris Hanke)
2013, 54 seconds
70mm film negative transferred to high-definition
Commissioned by the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Spiral of Time Documentary Film (16mm negative strobe-light double and triple exposed - painted with brine shrimp - dripped, splattered and sprayed with salted liquids: balsamic and red wine vinegar, lemon and lime juice, temporary fluorescent hair dyes - photos from friends Mark Titchner, Karen Russo, Aaron Moulton and Ignacio Uriarte and some google maps- texts by Jwest and Chris Markers' Sans Soleil script -shot by Peter West, strobed by Jwest, hands by Ariel West, telecine by Tom Sartori) 9 minutes, 1 second, 2013
16mm film negative transferred to high-definition
Commissioned by Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Arrid Extra Dry 1965 TV Commercial Film (16mm film print painted with birth control pills, writing inks and sweat - bought from a Brooklyn, New York street vendor)
1 minute, 15 seconds, 2013
16mm film print transferred to high-definition
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 head banging, impressed with thumb and pink prints devil ears), 2011, 6 minutes 47 seconds
Super 8 film print transferred to high-definition video with sound
Neutrino, Gamma, Alpha, Quantum Dots Film (16 and 35mm film negative tangled inside darkened film tent for ten hours and exposed to: neutron, gamma and alpha sources and quantum dots in liquid scintillator - made with the assistance of Lindley Winslow and graduate student, Raspberry at MIT's Neutrino Lab)
2011, 3 minutes 40 seconds
16 and 35mm film transferred to high-definition
Made while artist in resident at the List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA
Funded by the Nimoy Foundation for the Arts
Dawn Surf Jellybowl Film (16mm film negative sanded with surfboard shaping tools, sex wax melted on, squirted, dripped, splashed, sprayed and rubbed with donuts, zinc oxide, cuervo, sunscreen, hydrogen peroxide, tecate, sand, tar, scraped with a shark's tooth, edits made by the surf and a seal while film floated in waves- surfing performed by Andy Perry, Makela Moore, Alanna Moore, Zach Moore, Johnny McCann - shot by Peter West - film negative sanded by Mariah Csepanyi, Andy Perry and Jwest), 2011, 8 minutes 15 seconds
16mm film negative transferred in high-definition
Commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA