Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
KEN KOBLAND
February 24 – February 26
NYC-based artist Ken Kobland has been demonstrating his mastery of both 16mm and video since he started making moving-image works in 1975. Much of Kobland’s film- and video-making career has been devoted to his long and remarkably fruitful collaboration with the renowned NYC avant-garde theater company, The Wooster Group, with whom he’s worked since the late-70s, creating pieces that have been incorporated into their productions or that have documented or reconfigured these live performances. Much of this work will be seen here at Anthology in mid-February, in the context of our tribute to The Wooster Group (see pages ?-?). But the films and videos Kobland has made apart from the Group are equally accomplished, and deserving of their own spotlight. From his early 16mm works, with their extraordinary use of optical printing, to his later, similarly multi-layered videos, Kobland’s work is both formally rigorous and psychologically evocative.
“Through metaphor, provocation, and association, Kobland often explores the historical meaning, critical context, and received notions of a particular site or place. He writes, ‘I “dream” a place… The work is principally about reflecting on the meaning of a site; historically, psychically, and physically. It’s about the saturation of place. The place in our heads and the place on the ground.’” –ELECTRONIC ARTS INTERMIX
All film descriptions by Ken Kobland.
