Song of the Land
2023. 6 min, Color, 2K Video.
Single shots of two iconic Mongolian buildings, the National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet and the Ard Kino Theatre, are cut into nine segments and reassembled in the frame showing slightly different moments in time simultaneously in the same shot. The instability of these images highlights the precarious state of these historical buildings, which were slated for demolition causing a public outcry in 2019 and again in 2023 (demolition plans for the Opera and Ballet Theatre were canceled in 2019 and the Ard Kino Theatre, an important site in Mongolian cinema history, was torn down shortly after this film was made). In this sense, we can understand the concept of montage as a dialectic between the forces that shape remembering and forgetting in a society. These sequences are juxtaposed with images of contemporary Ulaanbaatar in 2022, including a shot of the National Archives of Mongolia that houses the country’s film and photography archives. This film was produced during a participatory research trip on the topics of Mongolian contemporary art practices and Mongolian cinema history. The music “Song of the Land” was composed by Can Tamura.
