Escape from New York

Escape from New York is compiled using footage from Vallet Kleiner’s journeys from Paris to New York, through Eastern Europe and Asia. It is a two-tape film with a highly sophisticated edit. It does not follow any chronological order, but jumps from location to location and backwards and forwards in time, as if the viewer were groping around in Danielle Vallet Kleiner’s memory in search of context or something recognisable. The two-tape film is a compilation of short impressions of places: each image calls to mind specific associations and meaning, sometimes more precisely defined by signposts with place names or other useful hints. If there is such a thing as a narrative, then this is provided by the soundtrack, with an identical text in two different languages.
Danielle Vallet Kleiner has been engaged in work on time and memory for about ten years. Her films and photographs, made in the course of her travels, are characterised by a style of editing that conveys the progression of time, evoking recognizable or undefined places.
On show in Witte de With.