Two Affect Studies

Two Affect Studies consists of characteristically simple experiments. In the first sequence, a tape measure marks a spot on the wall while the camera documents the mad, free forms of a rubber band repeatedly snapped into the air. The image is improbably set, to near-comic effect, against “Functional” (1957), a tune by jazz legend Thelonious Monk. In the second part of the work, Perlman recorded the visual effects produced by the billowing wisps of smoke from two cigarettes left smoldering in an ashtray. Accompanied by Samuel Barber’s willfully sentimental “Adagio for Strings” (1936), this sequence, like its counterpart, uncovers the surprising potential for emotion, humor—and, ultimately, meaning—that resides within the simplest of stunts.