MUNICH.- The Kunstverein München opened this year's Kino program with Reclaimed Empire (Deep Edit) - an approximately 35-minute video work by American artist Adam Putnam. It consists of 81 video segments produced between 2008 and 2016, including many, which haven’t been seen previously. It is sequenced specially for this presentation and combines fragments and experiments from the multifaceted practice of Adam Putnam, exploring the boundary between performance and architecture.

Reclaimed Empire (Deep Edit) is a video made up of many other videos. It operates. It congeals. It takes you on a journey through mystical landscapes and spaces, with enigmatic architectures and mysterious creatures: a veiled face; sickly clouds; nimbus-like forms hovering within constructed spaces; light and shadow shifting and refracting prismatically; pyramids scraping the sky, exceeding it, threatening to split apart; the Chrysler building; monoliths and models; stairs leading to nothingness…

The camera remains fixed, yet the images pulsate, which is amplified by the superimposed sound. An incessant sequence of soundtracks permeate every single segment: bells, birdsong, whale song, synthesis, Tinnitus, meteorological events, metallic overtones, the landscape, architectural undertones, traffic degenerated to flies, 78 rpm fragments spun at 33, feedback, phasing, glacial subsonic frequencies…

But despite such an unrelenting procession of sounds and powerful images, Adam Putnam’s Reclaimed Empire (Deep Edit) is strangely silent. Or, rather, strangely still. At the very least, the irrepressible stillness pervading both sound and image (and their tertiary offspring) elicits a certain muteness, a certain stupefaction.

Some taxonomies are provided by their author: ‘Reflections’, ‘Set Pieces’, ‘Landscapes’, ‘Architectural Thresholds’, and ‘The Veiled’. They form a compass. But one can easily get lost within the internal logic driving this torrent of vignettes. Very often, what’s seen and what’s heard oscillate at different wavelengths. They resist the corral of categorization, interpretation, or exegesis.

Reclaimed Empire (Deep Edit) is a conundrum to consider, closely. And so, Kunstverein München will remain dully immersed in this dense compendium of 81 video fragments – triangulated by a projection screen and two speakers in the Kino. Putnam sequenced the videos to incorporate over time, so we’ve scheduled two months, and hope it will be sufficient.

Adam Putnam (born 1973, USA) lives and works in New York City. His work has been included in the Busan Biennial , Art Statements , P.S. 1 , The Astrup Fearnley Museum, and Whitney Biennial . He is currently represented by P.P.O.W. gallery in NYC.