Third Known Nest brings together Kalin's witty and poignant "video diary" pieces with new interstitial material that thematically links the works with cogent literary quotes. Merging elements of music video, text, and intimate Super 8 "home movies," Kalin has created a personal and cultural chronicle of the 1990s. Tracing a trajectory that moves from stylized AIDS activist spots to alternative music videos and poems of love and loss, Kalin' video journal culminates in a performative self-portrait.
It is an erotic response on the Helms Law, the American government's refusal to subsidize the prevention and awareness on AIDS. Kalin writes: "They are lost to vision altogether acts as erotic retaliation on legislation such as the Supreme Court sodomy ruling — declaring the private bedroom as open target for the State — or the Helms Amendment — the U.S government's refusal to fund explicit AIDS prevention information for gay men, lesbians and IV drug users. An attempt to reclaim eroticism and to address the contradictions of sexuality and romance in the face of a monolithic and culturally compulsory heterosexuality, They are lost to vision altogether finds queer history where it can and invents the rest." 2 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1994.
UntitledFrom a quote from Jane Bowles, this video-poem presents a collage of some aspects of contemporary life, people moving around, traces of inhumanity. Music by Brian Eno. Kalin's short video works, which use literary quotations as starting points, function both as visual poems and as alternative music videos. With their astute conjunctions of image, music and text, these tapes respond to issues of sexuality and human interaction in the 1990s, more than a decade into the AIDS crisis. 2 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1994.
UntitledSpot made by this former member of Grand Fury. This highly stylized and deftly edited provocation features a cast of performers, diverse in national origin, who recite a litany of statements meant to challenge viewers' secure notions of national identity. Kalin asserts that bodies are very real battlegrounds, territories that are contested and controlled by the same political forces that determine borders or set national policies. Nation was created as part of "TRANS-VOICES", an international multi-media public art project that was conceived to reflect a broad spectrum of cultural diversity — national, racial, and ethnic — that characterizes both France and America today. Created by seven American and seven French artists, the video spots operate as trans-cultural investigations, questioning the validity of national identity, exploring the origins of cultural ideology, and charging the ethics of government entities. The spots communicate messages about the fundamental social, political, economic and ecological shifts that mark the close of the 20th century.
UntitledIn I hung back, held fire, danced and lied Kalin confronts loss, intimacy and estrangement. This visually arresting piece is constructed of Super-8 fragments that document familiar and foreign spaces, lovers and strangers. Rapidly intercut with these images are brief glimpses of names of individuals who have died from AIDS — some famous, others not so well known — that further notions of anonymity and immortality. Kalin's imagery serves as an 'imprint' of the living world, preserving for an unknown viewer personal experiences that have already fled.
UntitledThis piece continues Kalin's poetic and interpretative use of music married to vision, drawing on a range of images and textures to create a romantic reverie of a relationship between two men. With music by Annie Lennox (composition of Cole Porter) and on a quote from Virginia Woolf. Kalin's short video works function both as visual poems and as alternative music videos. With their astute conjunctions of image, music and text, these tapes respond to issues of sexuality and human interaction in the 1990s, more than a decade into the AIDS crisis. In finally destroy us, Kalin uses found film footage, home movies, and haunting pop music (Annie Lenox singing Cole Porter) to poignantly recall moments of love, shared and lost. The title is taken from Virginia Woolf: "But these meetings, these partings, finally destroy us."
UntitledEvery Wandering Cloud is the first instalment in a series of experimental videos inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde. Interweaving text from Wilde's “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” with hand-drawn animation derived from Edward Muybridge's “Human and Animal Location”, Every Wandering Cloud is a meditation on themes of freedom and imprisonment.