Experiments in Immediacy videos

videos / duration varies // 2005-2006

Experiments in Immediacy was my MFA thesis project from the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. I set up a system for creating videos: for six months, I would carry a small video camera with me and I would use it to instigate or notice moments of heightened awareness, moments where I felt more intensely present and alive than usual. I would capture these moments on video and edit them down into videos that somehow expressed the feeling of being in that moment. My goal by the end of each month was to finish a video, author a DVD (often with DVD extras), design a cover, and duplicate all this about 25 times. I then sent these packages through the mail to a group of friends who had subscribed for $5/month to my underground video club.

In my search for immediacy, I broke various social norms, engaged in public antics, ordered meals in reverse, spent time with wild creatures at the zoo, and more. I grappled with expressive editing strategies and wrote the titles concurrent with video editing. I thought of the titles as the first sentence in a story that continued as you watched the video. I also used the titles to position viewers together, with me (“let’s do this or that”), or used the titles to give instructions (“you do this while I’ll do that”). I loved the entire process and many of the techniques and preoccupations that arose during that generative period are still with me today. The videos have since screened as individual pieces and as a series at festivals, screenings, and exhibitions all over the world.

I am grateful to my MFA thesis committee for supporting and challenging me: Steven Eastwood (Chair), Caroline Koebel, Sarah Bay-Cheng. And grateful to other influential professors I met in Buffalo: Tony Conrad, Steve Kurtz, Paul Vanouse, Stephanie Rothenberg, Millie Chen, Joan Linder, Sarah Elder, Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Meg Knowles. Much gratitude to my friends from Buffalo, brilliant artists and thinkers who are still on a journey with me: Liz Knipe, Susannah Bartlow, Sarah Paul, Arzu Ozkal.

selections from the Experiments in Immediacy series:

Watch me break it down.

I'll ask for lunch in reverse order while you try to figure out if the waiter cares.

Let’s watch this guy at a coffee shop.

Watch me break it down. two-channel version for galleries

s
till images from the videos

Let’s watch this guy at a coffee shop. still image

Watch me break it down. still image

I'll ask for lunch in reverse order while you try to figure out if the waiter cares. still image

Rice: Like us, it rests under the bed. still image

selected screenings & exhibitions
2008 “Acts and Actions,: curated by the Portland Film & Video Artist’s Collective Zero, Station
Contemporary Art Space, Portland, ME
2008 “The Show Starts on the Sidewalk,” curated by Nomi Talisman UC Santa Cruz, CA
2006 Big Orbit Gallery, Buffalo, New York
2007 Rochester Contemporary Art Center, screening, Rochester, New York
2007 Echo Park Film Center, screening, Los Angeles, California

documentation from the process

Experiments in Immediacy documentation of the process (video)

Experiments in Immediacy documentation of the process

Julie Perini is a filmmaker and artist in Portland, Oregon.