Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer West presents Hologram Phantom Limbs, 2023, a site-specific installation that re-contextualizes media works presented at the LIAF Biennial, Norway, 2022.
Drawing from Los Angeles historian Norman Klein's idea of phantom limbs and the social imaginary, West's installation is deeply connected to the city's history of urban development. Fusing the raw energy of analog film with the lo-fi technology of 3D advertising projectors, West creates a phantasmagoria of a future where abstracted, destroyed, and painted-over holographic images offer clues to the city's past. The outdoor installation, consisting of rubble and faux holograms, features cats intertwined within ruinous images of the LA County Museum of Art. The artist's application of inks, Los Angeles tap water, and urine to her 35mm, 16mm, and super 8 film strips enables the lo-fi effects in Hologram Phantom Limbs, making this work an inherent and bodily extension of the city, a phantom limb of our cultural memory.