In Person: Lynn Marie Kirby and Lauren Marsden

The artists featured in February's DIM presentation met in San Francisco in 2008, when Lauren Marsden was a student in Lynn Marie Kirby’s graduate class at the California College of the Arts. This encounter was the beginning of nearly a decade of conversations about such themes as the choreographic in film, the role of director/collaborator, improvisation as method and subject, the imaging of sound, and the importance of place-ness. This program of short works, alternating from one artist to the other, visits these themes, much like a dialogue on the screen.

Study in Choreography for Camera Remote | Lynn Marie Kirby 2000-2001. 6 min.
Against a Brick Wall | Lauren Marsden 2015. 3 min.
Karate Class Exposure, Three Variations | Lynn Marie Kirby 2006. 12 min.
Location Location: 2400 Motel | Lauren Marsden 2015. 3 min.
Fields of Grain | Lynn Marie Kirby 1984-ongoing. 7 min.
Birds of Paradise | Lauren Marsden 2017. 15 min.
Room Tone | Lynn Marie Kirby 2016. 12 min.

Lynn Marie Kirby is preoccupied with questions of place, the residue of history, and liminal states, and with seeing through different systems, both their visible and hidden underpinnings. Her practice depends on improvisation and collaboration, accidents that make her jump, and forms of contemplation. She explores how technologies are used as extensions of perception to capture the flow of time. Her films have been shown in galleries and festivals around the world. She is a Professor of Fine Arts and Film at the California College of the Arts.

Lauren Marsden experiments with the ways a performative act can be documented and re-circulated, often in relationship to contentious and gendered sites and landscapes. At the core of her practice is a collaborative methodology called structured improvisation, which she has used with many professionals, including a police sketch artist, a typeface designer, voice-over actors, costume designers, and pole dancers. She has exhibited her work at galleries and festivals in Canada and around the world. Marsden teaches media arts and critical writing at UVic and SFU and is the editor of Decoy Magazine, a Vancouver arts publication.