SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Thursday, November 11, 2004

Ken Kobland: Frames of Reference

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts





Buildings and Grounds/The Angst Archive, Ken Kobland’s newest video continues his long concern with using framed landscapes and urban spaces as building blocks for the contemplation of the human condition. This award-winning piece explores placeless-ness by juxtaposing both appropriated and original images and sounds. What emerges from these contrasts is a language of loss, of “[t]ransience, consciousness and desire. Between the landscapes and the thoughts, there is, more often than not, a distance, disbelief or irony.” (Ken Kobland) Also screening are two 16mm films from 1977-8: Frame restructures a seashore landscape through a car window. Vestibule (in 3 Episodes) explores the typical entryway to New York City apartment buildings. By reframing this small area through his camera eye, Kobland depicts what may seem mundane as a richly inhabited urban space. (Maïa Cybelle Carpenter)