An email notification on Sep 26, 2011:
The user named KiNo just added you as a contact on Vimeo.
KiNo's profile on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/maneatingseas
The email still unread, a few nights ago I clicked on the link. There are a series of videos of the "Poet of Sound and Image," a young man with a British-style accent who is likely of Russian origin called KiNo. KiNo writes songs, is a performer, a public personality.
His films are oddities in that they seem composed of a mash of images that are flung together without planning or thought. Are they brilliant postmodern montages of contemporary life or bits of filmic captures, the kind we would all have on our cameras if we walked around filming ourselves in the city? Are they a 'found poetry,' meaning not pre-planned but plucked from many hours of video and spliced together in an almost random way?
The video I chose (or it chose me, for I am never sure about this) for this week's VidPoFilm seems a patching of sequences of images together with a voiceover (by different narrators, one fully in Russian with no subtitles) that gives depth to the moving images of the band of musicians as they visit a medical museum, set up and perform before an audience, look at buildings, drive around in taxis, and disappear into Central Park discussing the moon with backpacks at night at the end.
Live! — Part 3 from
KiNo on
Vimeo.
Poet of Sound and Image KiNo presents a film in episodes: Live!
Documentary of life and collaborations in New Vague City.
This film is dedicated to my friend Ira Cohen who passed away recently; leaving behind a materialised account of the akashic records in his poems, photographs, films and inspiring conversations with the individuals whom were graced by his friendship.
With highlights from the KiNo Exhibition — Invasion from Within.
Featuring footage of the performances with musical legends Malcolm Cecil (Pioneer of electronic music) and Andy Rourke (The Smiths).
Ira Cohen film
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda
http://www.arthurmag.com/?s=the+invasion+of+thunderbolt+pagoda
Made by 9
_
This film is ostensibly a memorial to a poet who KiNo knew and loved, Ira Cohen, 1935-2011.
Ira Cohen narrates a poem, presumably his, and, while it isn't until the end, because it is the core of the video, I place it here:
Whatever truly dies stays dead forever,
except the spirit live,
and redeem the spark,
this I saw in a luminous glass,
Cohen's voiceover continues,
stand tall as the flame,
which ignites the dark,
of the dark to come,
A performer in seems to be sucking red ribbon sucking into mouth. The footage is strange, Fellini-like, and it is shot with Cohen's technique of using mylar.
The final lines cannot be transcribed without watching, his voice carries the emotion of prophesy, a lifetime of experience, and the closeness of death:
surrender me not to the formless and unusable worlds of the incomplete
in the hope of eternal return as if in a magical tale of my own telling, it will be so...
Let's go back to the beginning of the video. Whatever KiNo's video is, it is a journey video. We follow KiNo and his musicians around his city, New Vague City, which is a euphemism for New York City perhaps in the way that Albion was for William Blake. KiNo has a mystic side, and he refers to the transcendental from time to time.
But nothing is dwelt on; nothing lingers. We move quickly. The video opens with a man walking up steps from a dark interior, like a boat's hold, to a square of light, and Cohen's voice, "Poetry may be next to prophecy, but I also know life is next to death, that sanity lives next door to insanity."
There are shots of a camera lens, with the subtitle, "optical purgatory," a name KiNo gave to a song he wrote about transcendental dreaming. A poem is recited by a woman in Russian, subtitled, "yes, please, rise us from the dead."
What follows is a smorgasbord of images. These is a skeleton on display and a brain on a stainless steel stem, images which I found took us into the strangeness of the body itself. We are in the realm of medicine, the body, it's construction, mortality. Subtitles appear, "we are still in the realm of blood and tears." Then, moving escalators, an old lecture room, a man's head in silhouette against a brown wall with name stickers on it. A silhouette of a hand, angelic clouds, "your palms hold a million starts to new legion of stars," a silhouetted woman in profile with her hair in a bun passes by. "But, man, permit us to land. At home, I am innocent..." and something that looks like tags on a wall showing the solar system with the silhouette of the back of a man's heading watching.
An older man's voice begins, Cohen's, and his poetry is the most interesting aspect of the videopoem. He says, "radio waves bouncing around in the void," and bright sparks from soldering metal appear.
KiNo narrates, "and this is the natural course in the events of the energy," while the camera zooms in on an office, bare concrete walls, a desk, two chairs and a white business phone. Then KiNo in white on a white couch being interviewed by a woman in black with long wavy auburn hair who speaks English, "You're a poet of sound and image...?"
Then an announcement, subtitled on screen beneath a brain on display, "KiNo Sonic Exhibition in June - Invasion from Within (Russian Announcement)." Dramatic zooming in on the brain, dramatic lighting. The music instrumental, gritty. An older sound technician or musician or professor, in a sound studio, equipment all around, enunciated KiNo, the name, then we see the brain again. This is followed by KiNo in a room with walls of controls, like the interior of spaceships in the movies. The older man keeps talking, but in Russian, and no subtitles are offered. Next we are on the street, looking with the hand-held camera lens, it is summer; then we are looking down from a second floor to an art gallery and an older man is looking up at us. There is strobe lighting an art opening, lots of people talking, though we never see the actual art.
KiNo appears in black, smiling. Cut to another scene with a band performing, being recorded, electronic instruments and sound equipment all about. KiNo in black with white markings playing a large keyboard piano amidst other band members. Cut back to the people at the art reception smiling, drinking, watching and being watched, the way people are at such events, catching up with friends and acquaintances.
When the older man who has been narrating in Russian is finished, he turns to the camera, to us, and smiles.
Next is a shot, perhaps from a bridge of a yellow taxi, on a road at night. A voice, KiNo's, like from a megaphone or public intercom system, "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is New Vague City"… "a leased apartment"…. "please remain dishonest (shots of a street at night, pedestrians, car headlights)…extend your fingers where they don't belong… (young designers fixing what look like paper lanterns in a store window) …and operate in total darkness… thanks for believing the New Vague City publicity machine."
Then we are back at into the concert we saw being set up earlier, and see the audience watching in the darkened room, subtitle: "Performance with Malcolm Cecil (Tonto) and Andy Rourke (The Smiths)." The music is rich, ambient, orchestral, pop, and spacey. All the clips are hand-held, shaky. There is a span of the stage covered with instruments, equipment. Next we are walking through a grey bridge between buildings, KiNo voiceover, …"I instigate things I must document. Remembrance of things past, fast." Subtitle: Eve of full moon - photographer Ian Couch takes our portraits in Central Park" KiNo is in white like a sailor and jumping skipping on the streets, we see him from behind, …"see if we can see… the full moon." Cut to the inside of a moving car, where a man with bushy hair sits. Now in a park, KiNo puts an empty beer bottle in a bin, he is in a jean jacket, then we see a woman, a light, a man carrying a large tripod, and the voiceover: "in the city we don't realize what influence the moon has on us, because we just don't see it…. " A discussion ensues, "what light it is … it's like we just don't see it …. out there." KiNo is in a car, waving to the night city outside the moving window, "but it's the strongest light there is.." Someone says, "only film on a full moon." A woman in the dark park, says in Russian, but subtitled, "… I arrived at the moon …"
They all walk into the dark interior of the park, disappearing in the blackness.
This video depicts a world that is not altogether organized. It is an odd assortment of images of a band on tour.
It seems to say, the only plot is our journey through life, and it is a strange trip.
_
