Jenny Perlin: Possible Models

Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
November 12—December 31, 2006

In conjunction with a related film program, Breathe in, Breath Out, featuring Perlin’s Perseverance & How to Develop It, 2003, the following 16mm animations were on view at the Henry Art Gallery. Exploring different social and cultural histories via stop-motion, Perlin deconstructs documentary modes through an unlikely medium.

Jenny Perlin, Possible Models, 2004, 16mm, b/w, silent, 10:45, still

Possible Models, 16mm, b/w, silent, 10:45, 2004
Outlines a news story about John Ashcroft’s announcement in June, 2004 that a Somali immigrant to Columbus Ohio was charged with plotting to blow up a mall. The Somali, Nuradin Abdi, was arrested and held for more than 6 months before being formally charged. The film continues with three parts detailing the history of shopping malls, the construction of mega-malls in Dubai, and the hyper-capitalist project, “The Freedom Ship,” a floating mile-long home for the wealthy, before returning to the story of Abdi and what might await him in the U.S. justice system.

Jenny Perlin, Review, 2004, 16mm, b/w, sound, 3:00, still

Review, 16mm, b/w, sound, 3:00, 2004
The hand-drawn film Review combines headlines about the war in Iraq with interjections from major operas and receipts from movie tickets and film rentals from the fall of 2003. The dates of the headlines and the film receipts are the same, connecting a daily experience of tragic news with a subsequent escape into cinematic entertainment.

Jenny Perlin, Notes, 2006, 16mm, b/w, silent, 3:20, still

Notes, 16mm, b/w, silent, 3:20, 2006
Harry Gold, codename “GOOSE,” was convicted in 1951 for passing secrets of the atom bomb from physicist and spy Klaus Fuchs to Soviet agents. The animations in this film are copies of Gold’s absentminded drawings, scribbled over drafts of his resume and cover letter to the Atlantic Refining Company, Personnel Department, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1948.