Ana Mendieta - Untitled (Self Portrait with Blood), 1973
“In Untitled (Self Portrait with Blood), Mendieta splattered her face and upper torso in blood for a series of six photographic self-portraits. Her desire to explore violence against women had been triggered in part by a rape and murder case during her time at the University of Iowa, but in this series she is anything but a victim: defiant, engaged and wholly addressing the viewer’s gaze.” [alisonjacquesgallery]
When Sony stopped manufacturing replacement parts for its Aibo pet robot, owners scrambled to save the robot-dogs that had become part of their families.
In time, the world will realize that Martin de Thurah’s music videos & commercial work were just vehicles for tiny masterpieces. The Danish director’s hallucinatory images carry a form of emotional weight uncommon in our contemporary world of visual cacophony. I was fortunate enough to see his excellent work for the Danish Pavilion at EXPO Shanghai in 2010. Some of my favorite works of his include commercials for : BLK DNM, Hennessy, and Acura. His unreal music video work has produced some of the best videos for: Feist, James Blake, and Fever Ray among others. Here are two short works by him I feel are often overlooked.
FILM 1
These eight minutes for BLK DNM feel like we’re gazing into a couple’s eternity. The short seems rooted in a poetic reality that only the love child of Buffallo 66 and the LEVIS Go Forth ads could muster. The opening diner scene introduces the two main players via the real winner in the short, the actress that plays the waitress. Her beautiful line delivery and piercing blue eyes make the video for me, if anything, watch the video for the first two minutes and fourteen seconds.
The video’s sharp turn comes halfway through with a dream sequence that ends in something of cosmic revelry. De Thurah crafts his images expertly and chooses his words wisely. The couple has a very Goddard standoff that ends when the woman (an Irene Jacob look alike, while the man, to me, is a clear Gallo) states “I’ve always wanted to live in a country with a dictatorship.” We then begin to loose sight of the couple’s reality and end up in a saturated hallucination that is purely driven by an emotional reaction to the visual. Every time I watch it, I forget it’s a commercial. Which is what any good commercial should do. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go on the BLK DNM website and consume, consume, consume.
FILM 1 from martin de thurah on Vimeo.
THE NATIONAL LOTTERY “Dreams”
In this emotionally staggering commercial, de Thurah relies on the soundtrack from Red (I sense a Kieslowsky motif), sweeping cinematography, and an expertly written background monologue to create a one minute and thirty second period-epic, spanning decades. The narrator, female, tells a tale of running, which eventually cycles back around from her own childhood to that of her daughter. The development of children is not unfamiliar territory to De Thurah, as most of his early films were built around the subject. Here, however, "dreams" are seen through the catalyst of running, a perfect narrative element which highlights De Thurah’s talents as a visual storyteller. The commercial is told like a trailer, the ideal commercial work, and if you’re not careful, it might leave you in tears.
He’s got it, at least, I think he does. Chilean singer/songwriter/pop-star/queer-icon Alex Anwandter has made quite a splash since his album Rebeldes dropped in 2012. With a mixture of catchy hooks, hip swinging beats, and a form of purgative honesty only found in the most secretive wells of pop; Anwadter packs a full fledged experience in the form of an album. Being his first solo work under his own name, (his first solo attempt, Odisea, is also quite a treat to listen to, as well as his work with Teleradio Donoso) Anwandter always seems to be looking back: in time, in love, in happiness. It's as if he’s trying to remember old promises made in relationships past. In Como Una Estrella Anwandter sings “Y si llegas al final, date vuelta otra vez y mírame,” (and if you reach the end, turn around once more and look at me), a laughably tragic image worthy of a picture postcard my 18 year old self would have treasured after loosing his first love. This youthful energy, wrapped in melodrama, presents itself with such incredible pizzazz, that I’ve often had daydreams of this album playing at a high school prom, with everyone dancing awkwardly and excitedly to every song, not realizing that most of them are about heartbreak.
The visual narrative behind the album works as a beautiful crescendo, starting off innocently and ending quite maturely. It was a strange pleasure to follow the videos as they came out; it felt like watching a good television show, or watching a child grow.
Tatuaje
Being the first single off the album, Tatuaje tends to be the least memorable of the four music videos. Black and white, moody, Anwandter sings of love lost and remembered in tattoos (one says “forever” the other is a cross, so on, so forth). Here, Anwandter establishes a trend which is to be repeated in the subsequent three music videos for the album: sing with sad puppy dog eyes and look as heartbroken as possible. Man, those puppy dog eyes, he really milks them. The video culminates in a strobe light recollection of a relationship as Alex finds himself surrounded by mannequins. It reminds me of a student film I made in my sophomore year of college. Simple, dramatic, tragic, a noble effort. I will attempt to make an argument that the music video correlates to the maturing of the artist as a singer and director (Anwandter directed 3/4 music videos for the album). This is his Hard Eight, his Fear and Desire, not necessarily a memorable music video, but a completist should give it a gander.
Como Puedes Vivir Contigo Mismo
The first music video of his I saw thanks to the awesome blog Catch Fire. A lovely homage to Paris is Burning, set in Chile. In an interview with CF, (after the video won Music Video of the Year 2012, I voted, it was rad) Alex commented on how “Nothing like this happens in Santiago. And for me, that was kind of the whole point.” The video is a party, a competition, a narrative unfolding with fabulous performers, and truly wonderful performances. At the end of the day, it's the performers who make the video. Anwandter chose his friends and people off the street, or in the club, to act and perform. It's their amateurish naiveté and confidence that makes it all work. The focus is shifted away from Anwandter, and his sad puppy dog eyes are kept to a minimum. The video breaks the original song right before the climax to add in a very Paris is Burning style interview with a guy on a bed. Shot on DV, the scene helps establish the video as a sort of PIB “redux” or “rework” into the 2010’s. The climax has Alex himself dancing; which is a wonderful break from the monotony of most of his video performances. At the end of the day, I love this video, I love this song, I want to dance deep into the night to it’s catchy ass beat, I want to be at that party with all those beautiful people. Let’s do it, let’s have one, yeah, I’m talking to you.
Tormenta
Pansexual love, mystical Puerto Rican landscapes, and a sad Anwandter on a boat make up the visuals to the third single off Rebeldes. This is, technically speaking, the most sophisticated video of the bunch. The cinematography is top notch, the coloring is killer, and the timing and editing are on point. As far as the song goes, it is a beautiful slow dance with your lover. While many music videos have tried to show an array of people in the throes of passion (I think of Citizens! True Romance, Disclosure’s Latch, amongst others), there’s something about this video (maybe that it feels in touch with nature, maybe the incredible diversity of the couples) that makes it feel like a very genuine experience to me. The formal qualities of the video could be attributed to the fact that Anwandter was not the director behind the clip, but rather Puerto Rican filmmaker Alvaro Aponte-Centeno. Regardless, the video goes hand in hand with the song, the couples are beautiful, and I can’t look away once it starts.
Alex Anwandter / Tormenta from Alvaro Aponte Centeno on Vimeo.
Rebeldes
The video for the title track on the album is tougher to talk about than the rest, mainly because it’s not great, but in the end, it’s the most satisfying conclusion to Rebeldes I could think of. Taking from Enter the Void's often ripped-off title sequence (thx Kanye), the video starts off and is often interrupted by buzzing lines of text. These title cards are never on screen for long enough to be fully read, so I resort to pausing every now and then (ok, annoying, but ok). We then follow the romance of two hip young kids, I’ll call them He and She. He and She have sex, run amock with their friends, dress in drag, and go to the beach. Meanwhile, Alex Anwandter makes wide eyed cameos, gets a tattoo, and inserts DIY concert footage towards the end, building the fast cuts to a climactic title card for REBELDES. The cinematography is, for the most part, good, the cuts are sometimes jarring, (especially with the title cards and cuts to black) but overall, Rebeldes has defined style to carry it through. The video plays out like a trailer, but not a trailer for a movie that stands on its own. However, it’s full of so many characteristic Anwandter images and elements that, in the end, it’s for the fans. The video is Anwandter bidding Adieu to Rebeldes, and, being someone who’s followed the videos and loves the album, it’s hard for me to dislike it. It’s a sloppy, albeit lovely, conclusion.
Alex Anwandter - Rebeldes (Director's Cut) from Nacional Records on Vimeo.
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
titsay
gummygunk
