Jennifer West embraces a collaborative and referential approach to her sybaritic films, using bodily fluids, drugs, cosmetics, foodstuffs, and kinetic acts such as skateboarding to create gestural handmade works on 35- and 70mm film that are subsequently shown as silent digital loops in gallery spaces. West, who studied with Diana Thater and Mike Kelley at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, expresses a closer affinity to visual art than to experimental film, describing her process by saying, “I’m coming at it more as a mark-maker and a painter.” Her outlook recalls Carolee Schneemann’s insistence that she is a painter above all else, and so it is not surprising that West considers Schneemann a significant influence on her work, along with Len Lye.

West’s handmade films combine cameraless techniques with self-shot footage of West, her family, and her students. The films reference and appropriate art-historical, cinematic, and pop-cultural works, and engage with a number of alternative youth cultures, including skateboarding and snowboarding, riot grrrl, and grunge. Furthermore, West’s films play on the tension between the images made by the materials placed on the filmstrip and the materials themselves. West works on multiple films simultaneously, allowing film to decompose or marinate while she attends to other elements. Upon completion, she transfers her work to digital and projects the film as a silent HD loop. Her work is most often shown as such in a gallery setting, with the image projected onto a white wall rather than onto a screen.