Third Known Nest by Tom Kalin
Tom Kalin
"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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“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…
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“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…
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“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 TitlesTags: 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…
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“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,…
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“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…
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Tom Kalin
INFORMATION GLADLY GIVEN BUT SAFETY REQUIRES AVOIDING UNNECESSARY CONVERSATION
1995| 00:01:05
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…
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“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…
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“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…
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"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;…
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“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…
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“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.
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”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…
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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…
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“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,…
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