Encounters I May Or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin

This project has evolved over the course of three years and, subsequently, has exhibited in different formats. Here documentation is arranged them here in chronological order, starting with the most recent - a three-part, single channel, 16mm film.

Single Channel Film Trailer and Images

Encounters I May Or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin

20min, 16mm, 2012

Encounters I May Or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin deals primarily with monumentality, narcissism and the ways in which our heroes are embedded into our identities, and manifested through the body. Through a variety of gestures, thepervasiveness of this practice is highlighted alongside its ultimate, inevitable failure. The viewer moves through various stages of anxiety, idolization and actual touchdown with 70’sgay sex icon Peter Berlin himself, capturing both the apparent and the hidden. The film guides the viewer through the process of making contact with a figure who exists only in hisown photographs.

The film is structured in 3 parts, which were made chronologically. In the first part the filmmaker appropriates Peter Berlin’s outfits and poses, playfully attempting to embody Peter Berlin’s artistic persona. Each frame of the original 16mm film was then hand-painted to distort the image, producing an animated effect that prevents the viewer from seeing the full performing body.

In the second part, a voice over relates a story riddled with anxiety about a potential meeting with Peter Berlin that is paired with images of mansions and window displays. The third and final section is an interview with Peter Berlin in his apartment, describing a moment of exchange that crosses lines of gender and generation, a moment where the identities of two filmmakers briefly coalesce.

This film has screened as part of "Dirty Looks: Yesterday Once More" at Yale University, The Hammer Museum, White Columns and is scheduled to screen at SF MoMa. Completed in 2009, the first part of the film has screened at MIX NYC; Girl Monster Hamburg, curated by A.L. Steiner; "Broken Sleep" at Midway Contemporary Art, curated by Karthik Pandian and has been installed at NADA NY 2012 and at Workspace Gallery as part of the Original Plumbing show.

LINK TO DIRTY LOOKS

LINK TO BROKEN SLEEP

Installation Documentation

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PRESS RELEASE
Mariah Garnett at Human Resources

October 2010

Human Resources are pleased to host: Encounters I May Or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin, a 16mm installation by Mariah Garnett.

“Doesn’t she look like me?”
- Peter Berlin.

Garnett deals primarily with monumentality, narcissism and the ways in which our heroes are embedded into our identities, and manifested through the body. Through a variety of gestures, Garnett highlights the pervasiveness of this practice alongside its ultimate inevitable failure.

The sculpture at the entrance of the gallery depicts evidence of a brush with a deity through a 16mm sculpture in which two projectors loop 100ft of hand painted film. The image, the artist posing as Peter Berlin, is splintered and refracted off the surface of a mirror ball, spewing out across the walls of the gallery. The piece recasts obvious markers of identity politics in a formalist context and highlights the labor of narcissism.

Also on view is a three-part film, Encounters I May Or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin (Parts 1, 2 and 3), in which Garnett moves through various stages of anxiety, idolization and actual touchdown with 70’s gay sex icon Peter Berlin himself, capturing both the apparent and the hidden. The film guides the viewer through the process of making contact with a figure who exists only in his own photographs.

THIS PIECE HAS EXHIBITED AT:

Human Resources (Los Angeles)

Pact Zollverein: Calarts Plays Itself (Essen, Germany)

DAILY SERVING PRESS BY CATHERINE WAGLEY