DIVISION AVENUE
Anne-Katrine Hansen, Janna Kyllästinen | USA 2014 | 13 Min. | OmeU
Division Avenue is an experimental essay film about one of the most prominent yet oftenignored landmarks and soundmarks of New York, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Thehistory of the BQE is very controversial – built through densely inhabited neighborhoods with no care fore the people living there. The piece presents the aural and visual experience of the constant presence of the expressway through ambient sound recordings coupled with varied personal and impersonal imagery of the road and people alongside it -at times haunting and hallucinatory, hypnotic and dreamlike. Eerie sounds, melodic pieces and imitations of traffic sounds are sonic references to the City Symphonies. The visuals compete for the audience’s attention: Subtly abstracted imagery depicting the flow of traffic is coupled with psychogeographic sequences that take a first-person view into the architecture and “fabric” of the BQE. It explores the road’s impact on the body and the sensory experience of what it means to live, work, and play around the BQEs with the passing of time symbolized by the passing of cars, and ghostly imagery as a reference both to what was and what will be.
