The Robots of Sodom

2002, 2:45 min, color, sound

In a series of short pieces drawn from his ongoing feature film project Behold Goliath, Kalin further develops the method of on-screen, appropriated, literary texts that he employed in Third Known Nest. The title of the series is a reference to the stories of writer and critic Alfred Chester (1928-1971), quotations from whom feature prominently in these short but densely edited montages. Chester's phrases are recited by computer voice synthesizers, and are also manipulated graphically amidst a palimpsest of animated drawings and video images.

In The Robots of Sodom Kalin takes up excerpts from Chester's In Praise of Vespasian, including a wildly eccentric vision of Sodom, a land of length and width but no depth, entirely populated by robots. Kalin illustrates this vision with a stirring montage of urban scenes and menacing masked figures.

Text: Alfred Chester, "In Praise of Vespasian." Music: Eno, Mobius, Roedlius, Oldland. Computer voices: Agnes, Bruce, Fred, Ralph, Victoria.

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