Jenny Perlin

Five College Visiting Artist in Film Studies

Specialization: Film, video, drawing, and photography

As an artist, Jenny Perlin aspires to "document numerous histories, ranging from the personal, focusing on a particular site and space, to cultural or social histories. These narrative cross paths, contradict, and reinforce one another." Each of her projects investigates these intersections.

Since 1991, Perlin has made over 20 films and videos. She describes some as live-action, appearing to conform to a conventional model of documentary filmmaking, and some as stop-motion animations, which she also thinks of as documentaries. Within each, Perlin says she works with "fragments, detritus, speculation, failures, and afterthoughts."

In each aspect of her practice Perlin takes "a close look at the ways in which social machinations are reflected in the smallest aspects of daily life. Whether it is copying a receipt from Wal-Mart, a headline from Reuters, or filming documentary-style interviews at the corner store, my interest is in the ways in which the sweeping statements of 'History' affect specific details of human experience."

Whether working in in color or black and white film or video, Perlin strives to use the medium's potential for both directness and metaphor to express ideas. Perlin describes her films and videos as "exploring the histories of industrialization, the self-help phenomenon, and the present-day landscape of Lower Manhattan." Perlin’s work is presented in film festivals, workshops, screenings, art galleries and museums. Among the venues where her films recently have been screened are the Rotterdam International Film Festival; Rencontres Paris/Berlin, P.S.1/MoMA, New York, Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, The Project, New York, and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Perlin is represented by the Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam.

During 2005, Perlin has had multimedia solo exhibitions at Wichita's Ulrich Museum of Art, the Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam, Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, and the P74 Gallery in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2006 her work will be presented in a solo exhibition at the M+R Fricke gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany. She has recently completed the 16mm animated film, Amend (2005), Possible Models (2004), Review (2004), and the multi-channel video installation Sight Reading (2004). In addition, she has completed the collaborative drawing project Translation (2005), and a slide/drawing/audio installation, Schumann Tree (2005). Perlin’s work will be published in upcoming editions of Rethinking Marxism, D Magazine (a magazine of drawing), and a catalogue of her solo exhibition at Chicago's Gallery 400 entitled “A worry-free life or your money back” will come out in 2006. In addition, Perlin is writing a book entitled Perseverance & How to Develop It, to be published in 2006.

At Mount Holyoke, Perlin teaches video production from a multidisciplinary perspective. Her courses include "View from Elsewhere," a production/theory course investigating the experience and representations of exiles and immigrants, and "Eye and Ear Control: Experimental Film and Installation," a production/theory course tracing the histories of film and video installation, as well as other production courses. This spring, Perlin has designed a new advanced video production/theory course entitled "Real Time," which looks at concepts of duration and instantaneity in film, video, installation, and new media projects.