Standardized Screen Test (2008) by Lynn Marie Kirby
Sunday, March 30, 2025, 3:40 pm
Lynn Marie Kirby: the insufficient frame
Lynn Marie Kirby in person
Presented in association with Canyon Cinema & The Roxie Theater
Admission: $15 General / $12 Cinematheque Members & Canyon Cinema Members
Event tickets here
By calling attention to the screen as more than a blank reflective surface, Kirby insists that “screen” is a complex set of meanings and uses—the environment itself is a screen. — Jeffrey Skoller: “Reflector to Transmitter: Rethinking the idea of screen in the recent work of Lynn Marie Kirby”
Cinematheque and Canyon Cinema present the insufficient frame, the latest installment of Canyon Cinema’s Canyon at The Roxie series, celebrating Bay Area artists of past and present. Today’s program includes films, videos and live performance from the multifaceted work of long time Bay Area artist, filmmaker and educator, Lynn Marie Kirby.
Kirby‘s work builds poetic vocabularies through moments drawn from daily life. Narratives are open-ended, built in collaboration and improvisation. Each work comes with its own set of materials investigations.
Today’s program highlights a selection of work from the 1980s to the present, including materialist explorations in celluloid film, improvisational analogue and digital video and ephemeral multiple screen/site embedded performative forms.
Following the presentation will be a conversation between Kirby and filmmaker/scholar Jeffrey Skoller, a contributor to Time and Place: on the work of Lynn Marie Kirby, a new book on the artist’s work published by X Artists’ Books. Jumping off from Skoller’s essay and the Roxie presentation, Kirby and Skoller will speak about the history and evolution of Kirby‘s work and will discuss questions and ideas that are raised through her uniquely expanded approach to cinema.
The musician and composer Anne Hege, as well as singers, will perform. The book will be available in the Roxie lobby before and after the presentation.
Lynn Marie Kirby is an artist, filmmaker and longtime Bay Area educator focused on questions of place, the residue of history and social choreography. Her conceptual practice engages time as a material, different sensory systems, improvisation and collaboration, accidents that make her jump and forms of contemplation. Her work has been shown around the world and has been supported by generous foundations, galleries and museums. Kirby is Professor Emerita in the Graduate Film and Fine Arts Programs at the California College of the Arts.
Jeffrey Skoller is a writer and filmmaker. In both scholarship and image-making, Skoller explores the radical aesthetics and praxis of the political avant-garde, representations of history and time and contemporary cinematic hybrids such as the essay film, experimental documentary, animated documentary and expanded cinemas. Skoller’s films have been exhibited internationally. He is the author of Shadows, Specters, Shards: Making History in Avant-Garde Film (University of Minnesota Press) and POSTWAR: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg (Blackdog Press). Skoller is Professor Emeritus in the Film & Media Department, UC Berkeley.