Lynne Marsh (UCR Department of Art)

"Camera Opera: How Music Directs Labor in Lynne Marsh’s Moving-Image Installations"

In her talk, Lynne Marsh will discuss the use of music as a driving force in several of her moving-image installation works. Filmed on location in a German national television studio, the Berliner Philharmonic concert hall, and at Opera North in Leads, UK, Marsh’s works employ music to guide cameras and frame the labor happening in each location. Her works capture the behind-the-scenes workings, presenting the mechanics that create an event as a type of theatre or performance in its own right.

Lynne Marsh is a Canadian artist and Associate Professor in the Art Department at UC Riverside. Before Los Angeles, she was based in London and Berlin between 2001 and 2016. Marsh’s practice questions the status of the image through mediation, technology, and production. The ideas central to Marsh’s research include offstage space; production-in-production; affective and cultural labor; music as a framing device; and the Brechtian revealing of the mechanics of cultural and theatrical production. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at UCR ARTS, Riverside, CA (2021); Tintype Gallery, London (2018); Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2017); Opera North, Leeds (2015); ICA, London (2015); Toronto International Film Festival (2014); and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2008). Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions and perennial events including La Biennale de Montréal (2014); Manif d’art 5–The Québec City Biennial (2010); and the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2010).