As a filmmaker and SFAI graduate, Lynn Marie Kirby has long explored the boundaries of cinematic form — often playing at and beyond the edges of the frame and audience expectations. Her work compels viewers into a deeper engagement with observations on place.
This program highlights several of Kirby’s expanded cinema works. In these pieces, the projection screen is no longer a static surface; it fragments or extends into the audience itself. Sound moves through the space, emerging not only from the projected images but also from a range of live performers. Each work is deeply rooted in a specific place and time, serving as an anchor for reflection on history, memory, and the role of technology in shaping narrative.
The doors will open at 1:30 p.m. with a presentation of the installation C to C: Several Centuries After the Double Slit Experiment, followed by a lineup of screenings and performances that begin at 2 p.m.
The program includes collaborations with musician and composer Anne Hege, filmmaker Zach Iannazzi, concert pianist Anne Rainwater, and choral singers from the Bay Area. Following the presentation, Kirby will be in conversation with curator and writer Tanya Zimbardo, who has contributed to a book on Kirby’s work published by X Artists’ Books, Time and Place: on the work of Lynn Marie Kirby, and provided an essay for Kirby’s most recent exhibition in Paris.
Program Lineup
Pre-show: 1:30 p.m.
C to C: Several Centuries After the Double Slit Experiment (1995, 16mm, live piano accompaniment)
Screening/Performance: 2 p.m.
Under the Linden Trees (2012/2019, video, made in collaboration with Etel Adnan)
Bathing (1994/2025, video, live singer)
Aspects of Projection (2025, live performance, made in collaboration with Zach Iannazzi)
One (2020, video, made in collaboration with James Kirby Rogers)
Elegy (2025, video and live voice-over)
Listen to the World Waking (2021, video with live chorus)
About the Artist
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 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. She received her BFA (sculpture) and MFA (film) from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Accessibility Information
Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance.
Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.