Foto-roman

Road-video, video-poem, fugue-like daydream. Those are three of the characteristics with which this associative andfragmentary video is described. Foto-Roman is a real stream of consciousness.Most of the material was hot on 8-mm video and comprises pictures collected in Moscow, Beijing, Istanbul, Milan and New York. The camera recorded what any tourist gets to see: landscape shooting past seen from the train or car, the gangway in the plane, the street seen from the hotel room or one's own feet in a hotel bath. But the tourist never records these images. Foto-roman in turn avoid the compulsory tourist shots.Foto-Roman also includes sultry pictures of a woman, alone in front of the window of a hotel room, juxtaposed with pictures of a man, alone in front of another hotel-room window. They gazes and the cutting suggest there is more than loneliness. Material from other television comedies is also used, sparingly yet effectively, and contrasts starkly with the shots of desolate hotel rooms.The title Foto-roman must be taken fairly literally; a novel in pictures (foto) exists relatively independently alongside an off-screen narration (roman/novel). The credits stress this by calling the video a 'radio/video'. The text is by James Strahs and is spoken beautifully with an ironic and warm radio voice by Vito Acconci.