Julie Perini: The Blog

The talk at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester last weekend was a blast.  We had this interesting crowd of smarty-pantses from the area, asking all sorts of smarty-pantsed questions about what I think about the discipline of athropology, this wave of “social practice” sweeping over the art world, and more.

By The Center for Urban Pedagogy

This past weekend I zipped down to Pittsburgh for the afternoon to see “Experimental Geography” at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon.  It’s a great show, but I cannot figure out from the site who was responsible for my two favorite pieces.  I will get back to you on this one.

I am still reeling from my first experience at a Flaherty Film Seminar. I felt like I was on another planet for a week. I will post more information about my week at the seminar soon.

Just a few of the filmmakers whose work I saw last week:
Amar Kanwar
Jeanne C. Finley + John Muse
Kamal Aljafari
Abderrahmane Sissako
Susanna Helke
Pawel Wojasik
Pavel Medvedev

A huge rainbow in Eastern Oregon

Wyoming

This sign in Nebraska says "Julesburg" but I missed it.

West to East, Portland, OR to Hamilton, NY

Monday night: Boise, ID
Tuesday night: Cheyenne, WY
Wednesday night: Geneseo, IL
Thursday night: Cleveland, OH

I stopped in Oberlin for an afternoon to visit with my friend Arzu Telhan.  She is an artist teaching at Oberlin, and she helped me out with transferring some video off of tapes.  I also spent some time in Cleveland with the great Mindy Peden and Dave Bartholow, and their 6 week-old kid Miles.

This is a mountain lake. Photograph by Ryan Pierce.

This past weekend was unbelievably dope.  I am not enjoying this return to normal life after four days on an artist retreat in Eastern Oregon with a new art/activist group called Signal Fire.  Picture this: a remote ranch, snow-capped mountains, hikes in the woods, great food, great conversation, and a jacuzzi that looked out on cows grazing in pastures. That was my life for a few days.  It was one of those magical mind melds where everyone seemed to get in tune with each other fairly quickly.  It was a real treat to be able to spend this kind of time with such smartypantses: writers, painters, sculptors, designers, activists, a biologist, a ceramicist, and little ol’ video me.

Soon I will post my latest video shot on the trip: a very short video documentation of what I believe to be a sasquatch sighting.  No joke.  Or a piece of salami.  The footage is unclear.