The telephone rings. "Hello, it’s Steen Møller Rasmussen. I'm making a film about New York and I'm calling from Denmark. Could you please tell me what you see out of your window now?" Rasmussen randomly called numerous New Yorkers and used their answers (and refUSAls) as a commentary for The Place To Be. He took the shots of New York on various visits between 1990 and 1996. The video opens with a piece of film from Robert Frank, a rotating extractor fan on a ventilation duct, which calls to mind the film, Light and movement experiments of Moholy-Nagy, Duchamp and Man Ray. It is accompanied by Frank's commentary: "In making films I continue to look around me, but I am no longer the solitary observer turning away after the click of the shutter. Instead I'm trying to recapture what I saw, what I heard and what I feel. What I know!" It is as if Rasmussen made the calls to bring what he saw and heard to life again: the people in the streets of Manhattan, the noise of traffic, the local radio news, joggers in Central Park. But then Jonas Mekas appears who looks at things quite differently: "A tool is a tool is a tool, and one chooses one's tool to make one's own images. Otherwise nothing lasts, everything is temporary". Nam June Paik always laughed at him, said that his videos would never perish, while Mekas’ films would crumble with time. But ultimately everything returns to dust, everything that we say, film, video, everything. Rasmussen mourns the loss of his illusion, because he knows that Mekas is right. The militant statements made by Paul Garrin, Paik's brother in art, cannot console him. Fortunately he has not lost his sense of humour; a little while later Nam June Paik also appears on camera. He is standing in the street with his nose against a shop window, but because the camera is on the other side of the glass, we can't hear a word of what he says. Everything that Paik says is lost as soon as he says it. Which does not however mean that Rasmussen hasn't listened and watched him carefully: The Place To Be is also indebted to Paik. Ultimately, in the last part of the video, Sound and image achieve a new relationship with each other. After six years of experiments and listening to his teachers, it looks as if Rasmussen has found his own way and is able to create his 'own images'.
– Lies Holtrop
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Sound Morten Holm, Editing Jasper Fabricius, Music Zorn og Eye, Vagn E. Olsson, Ned Sublette, Thanks to Lars Movin, With Robert Frank, Jonas Mekas, Nam June Paik, Paul Garrin, Zorn og Eye, Dino, Production Statens Filmcentral, Plagi@t
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