Julie Perini: Experiments with Fact & Fiction

First Friday Reception: August 6^th, 6-8pm

“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 have 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 using fictionalized material. This playful video installation 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.”

Originally from New York, Julie Perini is a Portland-based video artist, writer, and educator. Her work has exhibited at the Northwest Film Festival, the Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, PSU’s MK Gallery, and other national and international venues. She is a recipient of the 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Cross Disciplinary/Performative work. Her recent manifesto on “Relational Filmmaking” was included in INCITE! The Journal of Experimental Media and Radical Aesthetics, edited by Brett Kashmere. She has been involved with collaborative initiatives that promote independent media, community cultural production, and progressive social change. She currently teaches in the Department of Intermedia at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. julieperini.org