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Above: A Few Hundred Moments from June 2018–June 2019 (2019)

Format: digital video
Duration: infinite
Year: 2011 - forever


Since April 1, 2011, at least once per day, using a small handheld camera (originally a Flip camera, now iPhone), I compose and shoot a 60-second, single-take shot of what is going on around me. I have accumulated more than 80 hours of video, over 6,000 individual shots. These are tiny moments, fragments and notes from my life. The videos almost always document private moments, solitude. When I am with other people I am usually so absorbed by them that I forget to grab my camera and document the moment. Over the years I have used this archive to create video art pieces such as White Lady Diaries and Julie Time. Currently, I am working with the database to create a suite of short video art pieces and photographic works. 

Since fall 2021, I have been archiving the first decade of these shots into a huge database, so that I can sort the shots by date, subject, color, location, and other keywords. I built my database from the ground up, developing categories such as “How does this shot make me feel now?”  I eschewed traditional filmmaking language like “close-up” and “medium shot” in favor of terms that more accurately describe my unique style such as “camera against something: wall, window” and “from the bed.” I have been studying my own work through aesthetic, emotional, and socio-political lenses. I have also studied the work of other diary video/film artists, photographers, conceptual artists, and written memoirists in an effort to contextualize and get inspiration for the work. The late great diary filmmaker and poet, Jonas Mekas, is a major influence on my work.

As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, people are searching for ways to understand and express complex, layered experiences of time and emotion. During the pandemic, I witnessed an explosion of online projects creating communities around introspective daily practices: daily writing, daily drawing, daily photo/video shooting. I am inspired by these trends and believe that my multimedia methods for expressing time and experience model new ways for narrating the self.

Julie Perini is an artist and filmmaker.