Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Best known for “The Blank Generation”, his great examination of punk rock, Poe has come up with something very different in “Empire II”, a three-hour tone poem for New York City. In it, he radically remakes Andy Warhol’s eight-hour minimalist classic, “Empire” (1964). Yet it charts its own trajectory, providing an aural companion to the carefully edited bombardment of time-lapse urban imagery. Rarely has the music of Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Lucinda Williams and many others ever shared quite the same stage. The film is loosely structured around time and the four seasons; the angle of light, the pedestrian attire, the denuded trees all become clues in a plotless but nonetheless compelling adventure. Where Warhol’s film extends time, Poe compresses time; where Warhol’s camera is static, Poe’s camera is mobile; where Warhol’s film is silent, Poe’s has sound; and where Warhol’s film is in black-and-white, Poe’s is in vivid colour. Hypnotic and playful, chaotic and meditative, “Empire II” delivers an experimental tour de force that will test patience but reward persistence.

• Order tickets