The landscape, cultivation, electrification, erotic-ization, exploitation,
the masses, the hero, the pornographic and the farce; the spectacle in search
of ... something.
We seduce ourselves with images of a final earthly justice, good over evil,
love over lust, fairness over greed; the peasants inherit the earth, the
workers get their fair share, the earth's inexhaustible abundance, a mother and
lover, desirous of our seed; soil begets food, water begets electricity, and
planting is sex; we are cultivators and exploiters, a disease and it's highest
realization... and in the end the good sheriff marches off to conquer evil and
lives happily ever after... but everything turns out differently than we
planned. In the end it is only the image that remains ecstatic. Our life is a
tragedy and a farce and the "ecstatic," like all our fantasies, winds up a
piece of trash, shanghaied in a tree.
Ken Kobland: born in The Bronx, New York, 1946. Graduated in Art and
Philosophy, Union College, New York, 1969. Attended Columbia University School
of Architecture. Since the mid-1970's he has been producing independent film
and video works. Between 1986-87 he received a Berlin Residency Fellowship,
(DAAD), in 1992 a post-production residency from the International Centre for
Video Creation, Montbéliard, France. Currently he lectures on film and
video in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University, and serves on the
Board of Advisors of the New York Foundation on the Arts. He lives and works in
New York City.
USA 1996
16mm, col., 20:00
Realisation: Ken Kobland
