how we are in time and space: films and videos by Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Babsi Loisch, and Jennifer West

Marcia Hafif, Letters to J.-C. #6, 1999, video, 30:44

Los Angeles Filmforum and Armory Center for the Arts Present

how we are in time and space: films and videos by Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Babsi Loisch, and Jennifer West

Films online, May 14-29, Free

Online Conversation with the artists, Saturday May 21, with Nancy Buchanan, Babsi Loisch, and Jennifer West, moderated by Michael Ned Holte.  Register in advance below.

Tickets: free, via Eventive

Program link:  https://watch.eventive.org/howweare/play/6273601636ab4a02969df91f

Conversation Registration:  Register in advance for this Conversation:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-zuyTKSFTby3A3yYWUgx6g

Parallel to the exhibition how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith, at Armory Center for the Arts, a number of artists and arts organizations have been invited to respond to one or more specific works in this exhibition, resulting in new art works, performances, screenings, talks, and other events. This program will favor annotation over remaking of historic works, initiating a dialogue with the primary exhibition, its artists, and its rich materiality, expanding these connections outward in time and space. Events will take place at various sites over the course of the exhibition. All programs are free and open to the public. 

how we are in time and space: Films and Videos by Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Babsi Loisch, and Jennifer West brings together two artists from the Armory's exhibition with two artists making work in an intergenerational conversation with them and the exhibition. 

Screening curated by Michael Ned Holte.  Thank you to Irene Tsatsos, Jon Lapointe, Heber Rodriguez, and Peter Kirby.

Nancy Buchanan is an artist whose work has been shown in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Centre Pompidou, the Getty Research Institute, and in four Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time exhibitions. She was the subject of a solo screening of her videotapes at REDCAT in 2013. Buchanan is the recipient of four National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist grants, a City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs (COLA) grant, and a Rockefeller Fellowship in New Media. From 1988-2012, she taught in the Film/School at CalArts; she worked with community activist Michael Zinzun on his cable access show Message to the Grassroots for ten years; as a member of Zinzun’s LA 435 Committee, she traveled to Namibia to produce a documentary about that country’s transition to independence from the Republic of South Africa. Buchanan lives and works in Los Angeles. 

Marcia Hafif (1929-2018) was born in Pomona, California. After graduating from Pomona College in 1951, she settled in Rome, where she remained for almost eight years. Returning to California in 1969, and leaving painting for a time to experiment with film, photography, and sound installation, she completed an MFA at the University of California at Irvine. For the past four decades she divided her time between Laguna Beach and New York City. Hafif’s work has been exhibited extensively in museums, notably at MoMA PS 1; Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst, Zurich; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; and MAMCO, Geneva. Hafif was the subject of solo survey exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum, 2015; the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2017; and Kunsthaus Baselland, 2017. Surveys of her work in film and video have taken place at Lenbachhaus, Munich, in 2018, and the Tate, London in 2019. She died in 2018, a few months before the opening exhibition Marcia Hafif: A Place Apart at Pomona College Museum of Art. 

Babsi Loisch is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hawaii and Los Angeles. She was born in Vienna, Austria. She holds a MPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, a BFA in Photography from the Glasgow School of Art, an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts. Loisch’s work addresses the body as the simultaneous site of production, care, and labor. Her final exhibition at CalArts included video, drawings, and sculpture, all produced in the first months after giving birth and while working in the institute’s designated Lactation Room, a shed created to comply with state law. She subsequently presented a lactation project for Palms Park for the food-themed CurrentLA 2019 public art triennial. With Fiona Yun-Jui Chang, Loisch organized the curatorial project Homework at ArtCenter DTLA in 2020. She has participated in exhibitions and events at LACE, Los Angeles; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; RedLine, Denver; and Video Social Club, Plymouth, UK.

Jennifer West  works primarily with moving image and engages its material and cultural histories, often alongside consideration of feminist art and film legacies, in exhibitions, performances, and talks. Born in Topanga, California, West lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, and a BA with film and video emphasis from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She has lectured widely on her ideas of the “Analogital” and is an Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Frieze, and Mousse. West has produced eleven Zine artist books which were recently acquired by the Getty Museum. Her significant commissions include Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 2016-2017; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Art Night, London, 2016; High Line Art, New York, 2012; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2010; and Turbine Hall at TATE Modern, London, 2009.

Michael Ned Holte is a writer, curator, and educator living in Los Angeles. His most recent exhibition is how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith at Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena. He organized Routine Pleasures at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles, and edited a companion publication of the same title in 2016. With Connie Butler, he co-curated the 2014 edition of Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum. His writing has appeared in print and online periodicals such as Artforum, Art Journal, East of Borneo, Poetry, and X-Tra, as well as numerous exhibition catalogs and publications. Since 2009, Holte has been a member of the faculty of the Program in Art at CalArts, and he currently serves as an Associate Dean of the School of Art.