The Drawing Center’s online gallery is pleased to present Neither a winding nor an unwinding (2010) by Jenny Perlin. Challenging the perimeters of the documentary tradition, this investigative film takes as its source Henri Bergson’s suite of essays The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903-1923, 1946). Neither a winding engages with Bergson’s elaborate metaphoric explanations of duration—the philosopher often found examples in commonplace phenomena like sugar dissolving in water, fans, and rivers—as a way to observe how these fragments of daily life reflect broader social constructions and truths. Spliced between fragments of Bergsonian examples of duration, Perlin adds her own: the act of drawing.

Jenny Perlin
Neither a winding nor unwinding, 2010
16mm, b/w, 4:30