Jenna Bliss

Homing is Jenna Bliss’s first solo exhibition in New York and Ulrik’s inaugural show.

Professional Witnesses (2021) is an hour-long film about 9/11 made up of 8 scripted monologues performed by actors and based on first-hand accounts of the attacks. The film is set around late 2002/early 2003, and borrows the aesthetics of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’s Apple advertisements, and the era’s visual culture more broadly. Intimate yet frictionless, this aesthetic infused an aura of authenticity and contact into a potentially disorienting digital world, in which traditional referents had vanished.

The series titled No Artificial Flavors (2022) comprises analog silver gelatin photographs made from super 8mm film showing pigeons in downtown New York City. The title of this show references the pigeon's uncanny navigational ability to return home from great distances, and its historical use as a wartime communication technology.

These works are part of the first chapter in a series about Wall Street’s recent history. Future chapters will include the global financial crisis in 2008, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Professional Witnesses was commissioned by Stadtgalerie Bern.

Cast & Crew:

Janitor: Philip Moore

Delivery Man: William Urina Serna

Office Worker: Nadia Sepenswol

EMT: Dee Beasnael

Retired FDNY: Alexander Carney

Student: Soraïa Scicchitano

Artist: Tavish Miller

Wall Street Guy: George Fearing

Director of Photography: Sam Russell

Assistant Director: Marlon Diaz

Music: Hazel Rigby

Translation: Marlon Diaz

A selected list of sources for Professional Witnesses:

Voices of 9/11 by Ruth Sergel. https://911digitalarchive.org/collections/show/267

William Rodriguez talk on CNET and interview with Rosie O’Donnell.

The 9/11 Commission Report.

Benedict Seymour, “Do The Right Thing! The Anti-globalization Movement After S11” Texte Zur Kunst, Issue No. 44, December 2001 “Kunstmarkt”.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans.

Zak Ebrahim, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice.

Lawrence Wright, Looming Towers.

Tariq Ali, various articles.

Retort, Afflicted Powers.

Personal anecdotes from family and friends.