In I hung back, held fire, danced and lied, Kalin confronts loss, intimacy and estrangement. This visually arresting piece is constructed of Super-8 fragments that document familiar and foreign spaces, lovers and strangers. Rapidly intercut with these images are brief glimpses of names of individuals who have died from AIDS — some famous, others not so well known — that further notions of anonymity and immortality. Kalin’s imagery serves as an ‘imprint’ of the living world, preserving for an unknown viewer personal experiences that have already fled. Kalin concludes with a quote from The Black Boy Looks on the White Boy by James Baldwin: “I hung back, held fire, dance and lied. I was not going to come crawling out of my ruined house, all bloody, no, baby, sing no sad songs for me.
Content notification
Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.
Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
B1000108
Language
English
Audience classification
unclassified
Subject categories
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → AIDS (Disease)
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Black and White and Colour
Object Types
Artwork
Materials
Single channel moving image, black and white and colour and audio
Holdings
Digital Betacam [PAL]; Master
Digital Betacam [PAL]; Sub-master
VHS [PAL]; Reference - timecoded
MOV file ProRes4444; Digital Preservation Master - overscan
MPEG-4 Digital File; ACMI Digital Access Copy - overscan