Jenny Perlin, Addendum (Red Phone), watercolor on paper overlaid with watercolor on vellum, A4 size, 2007.
from Social Text 94:
Tonal Disturbances: Works on Paper by Jenny Perlin and Visible Collective
Susette Min
[excerpt]
No matter what the tune, everyone knows the distinctive sound of a cell phone ringtone. The cell phone has become a ubiquitous artifact in our day-to-day lives. In Jenny Perlin’s Addendum (2007), a series of ten watercolor drawings on paper and vellum, the cell phone figures prominently in the opening drawing, Red Phone, as an outmoded or inadequate form of communication. At the top of Red Phone, Perlin renders a short excerpt from Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata, Ich habe genug (I Have Enough; BWV 82). Given the text, in which Bach conveys an instance of ecstatic joy upon embracing the Savior, some have suggested that the music–full of pain and dissonance–presents a paradox. Interpreted by performers as life-affirming, its dissonant harmonies express contempt for worldly life, a yearning for death, and for a life beyond the present. . . .
At the bottom of Red Phone, Perlin copies a legalistic-looking document, a table that charts the evolution of a case citing an immigration offense and a decision to deport an unnamed perpetrator. Nuradin Abdi’s name is not inscribed in any of the pages of her mark making, but Abdi stands at the center of a circle of circumstance, if you will, that Perlin alludes to throughout Addendum and in her earlier animated film Possible Models (2004). In November 2003, Abdi, a Somali immigrant, was taken into custody for a violation having to do with his asylum claim and immigration into the United States. Before his arrest, Abdi lived in Columbus, Ohio, with his two children and pregnant wife and ran a small cell-phone business. Months later, in June 2004, Abdi was charged with allegedly planning to bomb a Columbus-area shopping mall. At the end of July 2007, Abdi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Under his plea agreement, Abdi will serve ten years in prison, pay a fine of $100,000, and most likely will be deported. As in the case of José Padilla, claims have been made on behalf of Abdi that he was “broken” while incarcerated; at one point during custody he was transferred to a federal psychiatric facility to determine whether he was mentally competant.
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The full version of this essay can be purchased from Duke University Press.