Julie Perini: The Blog

I was on KBOO today, Portland’s community radio station, talking with Eva Lake, host of Art Focus.  We mainly discussed my most recent work, Girl Next Door.  This video represents a giant leap in a new direction and it is the most conceptually and structurally complex work I’ve made so far.  I am excited about it.  Feel free to listen to us.

How fun is this:  On Monday morning, two smart, sassy artist-activists (Ryan Pierce and Amy Harwood of the organization Signal Fire) will pack me into their car and take me to an undisclosed location, deep in Mt. Hood National Forest.  Once there, they will install me into a 12′ x 12′ tent, feed me daily, and set me loose in the wilderness.  I have never camped in one place in the woods for 7 days straight and I am curious to find out what the forest has to say to me if I pay attention for that long. I do not know what kind of artwork will result from this experiment, but whatever emerges will be on view at a group show at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland this coming November.

I’ll be TOTALLY CUT-OFF and COMPLETELY UNREACHABLE by phone or email or anything else during the entire residency, through Sunday, August 15.  I don’t believe I’ve been offline like this since the early 90s.

Julie Perini: Experiments with Fact & Fiction
Opening reception:  Friday, Aug. 6, 2010, 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Exhibition dates:  Aug. 6, 2010 – Aug. 27, 2010
Pushdot Studio
1021 SE Caruthers Street
Portland, OR

This exhibition debuts my new work, Girl Next Door, a video experiment with fact and fiction that creates a portrait of everyday life in a North Portland neighborhood.  I combined six interviews – two with actual neighbors, two with non-actors whose life circumstances I imagine might be somewhat like my neighbors, and two with actors who stand in for my neighbors – together with material I have shot around the neighborhood.  This process creates an interesting spectrum of authenticity, as two of the interviews are “true,” two other interviews are factual but the subjects are not my actual neighbors, and the last two interviews are completely scripted situations performed by actors using fictionalized material.  This playful video carefully examines my relationship to my domestic environment while also exploring questions of identity and representation, as throughout this process I have made choices about which aspects of my neighbors’ identities to portray.

PORT recommended that people visit my Pushdot show and the Portland Mercury listed it.  Thanks everybody.

Uses of a Whirlwind Book Party
with members of the Team Colors Collective, contributor Julie Perini, and Kelly Fritsch of Upping the Anti
Wednesday, Aug. 4, 7:00pm
Red & Black Cafe
400 SE 12th Street
Portland, OR

The book party continues a series of events spreading the good news about Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, a new book edited by Team Colors Collective and published by AK Press.  My chapter, ”Art as Intervention:  A Guide to Today’s Radical Art Practices,” looks at contemporary approaches to the question of how to make art that promotes social change.  The chapter includes interviews with Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men, Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble, Paige Sarlin of 16 Beaver Group, Rosten Woo, former Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, Natalie Jeremijenko, and Dara Greenwald.

Screensaver: Open Video Projects in Amidei
Screening includes: I am trying to learn the words to Josie Cotton’s “Johnny, Are You Queer?” and now you can, too. (2005, DV, 5 minutes)
Curated by Open Video Projects / Sarra Brill (Rome)
Premio Internazionale Sergio Amidei
Palazzo del Cinema
piazza della Vittoria 41
34170 Gorizia – Italy