In equestrian culture, Groundwork is comprised of exercises that mature a horse’s response to its rider’s cues and the environment. This program of landscape films from the 1960s through 1980s similarly demonstrates structural and formal methods used by artists to finely tune their perception of natural phenomena. In The Sky on Location, French cinematographer Babette Mangolte focuses her camera on seasonal light and its variegation of the American West’s colour palette.

DIM Cinema presents a selection of archival work by New York artist Leslie Thornton in parallel with her exhibition at Vancouver’s Unit 17. A pioneer of contemporary media aesthetics, Thornton works at the limits of cinema, video, and digital media. Films such as X-TRACTS and Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue, both screening here, have coloured the development of her oeuvre over subsequent decades.