Third Known Nest by Tom Kalin

Tom Kalin

00:37:10

Collection: Single Artist Compilations

Tags: LGBTQ, Literature, Music

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"Third Known Nest is a collection of nine short works completed approximately one per year from 1991 to 1999. Interwoven with nine quotations from some of my favorite writers, the eighteen short entries in Third Known Nest function as an intimate visual diary—fractured pictures from my day-to-day life. I carried a Super-8 camera with me whenever and wherever I traveled, and also at home—just running errands or in the garden. I shot nearly a hundred fifty-foot reels of film.

Six of the pieces in Third Known Nest were shot on Super-8; two on 16mm and one on mini-DV. With the exception of Nation, I edited them on an off-line 3/4" editing system (cuts only) in order to elaborate an intricate, layered collage. Partially provoked by music video, each entry in the cycle of tapes pairs a literary touchstone with a song. They're somewhere in between formal 'experimental film' montage and the bombardments of our noisy pop culture. Though individual works are distinct in tone, the overwhelming impact of the program is emotional, nostalgic. Above all else, Third Known Nest works as a gallery of portraits in flux—myself and the people I love: some living, some dead.

As a counterpoint to feature films, these short pieces are pure liberation—a cheap, fast escape into the joys of the camera and the edit. No scripts, no production meetings: heaven. I've long admired the art of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, his audio recording of the Ursonate and most of all the visionary, life-sized Merzbau collage which eventually threatened to engulf his home. Like many others of his time, he remained a nomad after the war. I hope Third Known Nest shares something with Schwitters's graceful balancing act of "high art" against "low culture"—beauty in the gutter, bumping up against the flotsam and jetsam that clutters our world."

--Tom Kalin

 

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Tom Kalin

ONE (Jane Bowles)

2000| 00:00:30

“We each have only one single life which is our real life, starting at the cradle and ending at the grave. I warn Dorothy every time I see her that if she doesn’t watch out, her life is going to be…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: LGBTQ, Literature

Tom Kalin

finally destroy us

1991| 00:04:00

“But these meetings, these partings, finally destroy us.”—Virginia Woolf, The Waves (New York: Harcourt, 1978)“Since the release of his celebrated feature Swoon, Kalin has produced a number of…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: LGBTQ, Music

Tom Kalin

Nation

1992| 00:01:00

Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and The American Center in Paris as part of their international Trans Voices project, Nation flashes contradictory formulations of language,…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Body, Language, Politics

“It is curious that in the most important periods of one’s life, one never keeps a diary. There are some things that even a habitual diary-keeper shrinks from putting down in words—at the time, at…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

Tom Kalin

Nomads

1993| 00:04:50

“I fear nomads. I am afraid of them and afraid for them too.”—Jane Bowles, “Camp Cataract” in My Sister’s Hand in Mine (New York: Ecco Press, 1978)“Tom Kalin’s recent videos draw from literary…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: LGBTQ, Music, Poetry

Tom Kalin

Darling Child

1993| 00:02:00

“But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world’s ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us death is stronger than life, it pulls like a…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Architecture, LGBTQ, Literature

“I am a mannish / Muff-diving / Size queen / With bad attitude / An arse-licking / Psychofag / Molesting the flies of privacy / Balling lesbian boys / A perverted heterodemon / Crossing purpose with…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: LGBTQ, Literature

Tom Kalin

Confirmed Bachelor

1994| 00:02:45

“Criminality may present itself as a kind of saintly self-mastery, an absolute rejection of hypocrisy.”—Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York: Pantheon Books,…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: LGBTQ

Tom Kalin

FOUR (Oscar Wilde)

2000| 00:00:15

“Ah! It is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself.”—Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (New York: Harper Collins, 1989)This title is…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

I borrowed this absurd phrase from a sign posted on the conductor’s booth in the Washington, D.C. subway. The language of civil service here borders on unintentional parody, with its blankly polite…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Language

“Where the robots can eat food, they eat chemicals instead—as one would expect. Where they can live and act, they sit in dark rooms and watch others do it for them. Where they can have faith, they…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

“I hung back, held fire, danced and lied. I was not going to come crawling out of my ruined house, all bloody, no, baby, sing no sad songs for me.”—James Baldwin, “The Black Boy Looks at the White…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

"Look how the willow shoots its fine sprays into the air! Look how through them a boat passes, filled with indolent, with unconscious, with powerful young men. They are listening to the gramophone;…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

Tom Kalin

Dark Cave

1998| 00:04:15

“His heart was a dark cave filled with sharp toothed, fierce clawed beasts that ran snapping and tearing through his blood. In pain he left the work table and prowled around the room, singing to…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Experimental Film, Literature, Memory

“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.”—Virginia Woolf, The Waves (New York: Harcourt, 1978)This title is also available on Third Known Nest by Tom Kalin.

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

”But I—already an object, I do not struggle.”—Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida:Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981)This title is also available on Third…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Literature

Turn the lights down / Way down low / Turn up the music / Hi as fi can go / All the gang's here / Everyone you know / It's a crazy scene / Hey there, just look over your shoulder / Hoo hoo / Get the…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Music

“The roles that we construct are constructed because we feel that they will help us to survive and also, of course, because they fulfill something in our personalities; and one does not, therefore,…

Collections: Single Titles
Tags: Race