Stand in the Stream is an ambient, narrative, digital film that follows perspectives of a subjective body in time, family, community, work, action and in the daily mundane. Kahn’s most ambitious and complex filmic work to date, it layers a dizzying multitude of facets into a roaring and deeply moving visual opera that pays homage to life and the inevitability of time. History here is speeding and dynamic, a storm to be watched and catalogued, even while it resists categorization, soaking and tearing the notes.
Shot over the course of six years, Stand in the Stream was made using multiple video devices— from cell phones to point-and-shoots, spy and POV cams, large format HD and webcams, and real-time screen recordings of live streams, but contains no found footage. Driven by its images and sounds – a multiplex of information from Kahn’s indexical collection of footage – the film braids threads of narratives in relation to change: the deterioration of the artist’s worker/activist mother, Kahn’s own role as a mother, and the shifting demands, tactics and digital visibility of resistance movements across the globe.