A road along the beach near Provincetown (USA), a long time ago, in 1978. The cottages standing there slip across the screen. They are images filmed by Kobland for one of his first projects. We see many other little houses like this pass us by, shot from the New York trains and the Berlin S-Bahn. We see worlds which we exclude and from which we are excluded. Most material looks like landscape studies of urban areas. It is a form of connecting images and ideas across time and space: a familiar landscape in a place far away, at once comparable and different. The texts are taken from letters and diaries and are now spoken aloud in another context and backed by a Russian ballad from 'Soviet Hits of the Stalinist Era'. This switch of context disguises their origin in the personal and it is suggested that they are the translation of the song. But each time the ballad is played its text is different. The same question of authenticity is raised by the use of a piece of the soundtrack from Fellini's '81/2'. In the play of rhythm and beauty of the images, of the machines and their movements, their reflections and framing and the orchestration of their sounds it does not seem to matter where your journey begins or where it ends. Images, memories and associations pass by and it seems that one leaves and travels always in search of the same images, such as the cottages which file by once more at the end, like circus elephants.
– Carla Hoekendijk
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Ken Kobland ° 1946, New York (USA)
Lives and works in New York (USA)
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