Psychosomatic Films 1-5

Jennifer West won a 35mm film print of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Red Desert (1964) on Russian Ebay and dragged it along the Pink Beach off the coast of Sardinia, Italy, where some scenes of the film were shot. Fragments of coral and crushed shell create pink-hued sand that mark the surface of Antonioni’s first color film. Grains of sand and rocks coalesce upon and scratch the surface of the film, which was then transferred to HD frame by frame.

Film Title Poem is comprised of over 500 film title cards.

Tar pits form as petroleum seeps to the surface through fissures in the Earth’s crust, leaving viscous asphalt pools. To make Tar Pits Film, Jennifer West threw a strip of film into the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, still-bubbling asphalt pools which have seeped from the ground for tens of thousands of years. The film was then ridden over hot asphalt by a motorcycle and drenched in other substances including thick mayonnaise and body lotion.

70MM Film Leader soaked in MSG and boiling water - inscribed & stamped with the word seriously - with Viagra, Visine and Fake tanning lotion, 2008, 1 minute, 1 second 70mm film transferred to digital video

70mm film kissed with lipstick & impressed with teeth marks.

Commissioned by MIT's List Visual Art Center, funded in part by the Nimoy Foundation as part of residency Curated by Joao Ribas

Geological elements and erosion leave marks on a strip of 70mm film that floated in the Dead Sea and soaked in clay before getting stuffed in a suitcase to be brought back to Los Angeles, where it was submerged and sat in buckets filled with mud and salt for years in the artist’s studio. After five years, Jennifer West dragged the film along the mud and salt crystal encrusted spiral of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty before throwing it in the icy pink waters of Utah’s Great Salt Lake—the film’s frames were then digitally photographed and re-stitched together. Through material traces of mud, salt crystals and sand, distant places and layered temporalities flicker across a film that lasts less than one minute.

65mm film negative RAY-O-GRAM made by laying 100 foot long necklace atop the film negative, exposing it with colored flashlights - made in front of live audience in Rome, Italy - featuring 100 foot long leather necklace strung with pasta and mussel shells collected in Rome, and sea shells, eucalyptus pods and a few feathers from California - flashlights performed by students from Rome: Nicloletta Guglielmucci, Ludovica Palmieri, Alessia Notarangelo, Lorenza Bessone, Elisabetta Masala, Givlia Fontani, Damaride D'Andrea, Claudia Cavaliera, Antonio Pizzolante, Saverio Verini, Cristina Meregaglia and Mariah Csepanyi and Jwest, 2011, 32 seconds 65mm film transferred to hi definition video

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

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.

70mm film leader lined with liquid black eyeliner, doused with Jello Vodka shots and rubbed with body glitter.

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 pink prints devil ears.

Skinnydipping Carbon Beach Malibu Film – In Front of David Geffen's House (16MM color and b&w film neg sprayed with fried pickle juice, painted with Bloody Marys using, celery stalks & ash from the Malibu fires, submerged in the ocean – skinnydipping by Renee Lotenero, Lia Trinka-Browner, Karen Liebowitz & Jwest – lit by the full moon & search lights)

70mm Film Frames of Neutrino Movements - shot in 15 ft Bubble Chamber at Fermilab, Experiment 564 in Chicago - dunked in liquid nitrogen, neutrino movements outlined with invisible ink and decoder markers and highlighters, inked up by Monica Kogler and Jwest, filmstrip from Janet Conrad, MIT Professor of Physics, 2011

16mm black & white film soaked in lithium mineral hot springs, pennyroyal tea, doused in mud, sopped in bleach, cherry antacid and laxatives - jumping by Finn West & Jwest.

16mm color negative, positive and b&w negative scratched with tumbleweed, tire treads, pine needles, sprinkled with BlackJax extreme energizers pills, coffee, donuts, hot cheetohs & doused with gasoline & gatorade