A New Year
Benning's dazzling first work began as a bedroom experiment with the PXL 2000. A pastiche of image and sound fast becomes a lucid commentary on adolescent isolation in a poor Milwaukee neighbourhood. Viewing her room through a snow dome—in what may be the most oblique and profound evocation of the opening scene from Citizen Kane (if she'd seen it or cared}—Benning represents youth as it is lived, not as it is remembered.