aim, 2008-2010
Audio-visual, SD 4:3 Stereo, 4’20”
“Aim” is a short video based on a music piece I have composed on the purpose and it was premiered at the VIII International Festival of Experimental Art held in August 2010 at the Manege of Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
Audio-visual, SD 4:3 Stereo, 4’20”
“Aim” is a short video based on a music piece I have composed on the purpose and it was premiered at the VIII International Festival of Experimental Art held in August 2010 at the Manege of Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
The idea behind this audio-visual arose from my philosophical minds about the social unrests that were then bursting out around the world and still today are boosting more and more violently. At the dawn of this global agitation the policemen with anti riot suits became soon an icon in the collective imaginary, and also many other artists used them in their art, just for example the Take That band during the Brit Awards 2011 with the public performance for the song “Kidz”.
When I was writing the plot of this video, I already knew that the topic would have not find a conclusion in this sole short audio-visual. In fact, this video would have been just the first episode of a future trilogy.
The archetypal concept at the base of this video is that life is violence in itself: it does not exist animal, vegetable or thing begotten without guilt, nobody can be considered excluded from this principle, because any thing that exists do this to the detriment of some other cosmic substance, feeding from it. From the point of view of cosmic unity, procreation is the archetype of violence or the imposition of an entity that wants to subtract space and substance from the cosmos.
The guilt is not of the new being, which is innocent since it can not decide to come into the world, but it consists in the procreation act per se, all the more if voluntary.
For this reason I wanted to compare this philosophical archetype with that contemporary and iconic manifestation of it: the police with anti riot equipment, that is simply individuals who carry out a job with the aim to live, to create a future for themselves and their own family, to create a space for their own offspring. The primal violence aimed to impose one's own self.
I had a clear and simple idea for the visual part: a couple in anti riot suits spinning in an idyll of love, in slow-motion, which I preferred to create with computer generated graphics to make the task easier and cheaper. But before I had to create the music.
In contrast to the slow-motion picture, I wished to create a hysterical music, shocking, with numbly violent thou sarcastically sad lyrics, a messing and dull beat appropriate to idiocy, this is to say the mental confusion necessary to the bursting of violence. What more appropriate than the syncopated beat of ska music? Do not get me wrong, I do not dislike ska beat, just this piece has evolved from ska: it is skat.
I spare you the details of the music composition and arrangement, which took very long for my personal conceptual struggles. For the two non-professional singers I wanted a stereotypical rude testosterone male voice of the Barry White kind (James Smith) and a charming smile female voice (Barbara Johnson), which would have to interweave in a call-and-response lyrics with chorus refrains, recalling certain sugary love songs. That is why the ska rhythm is preceded by a short sensual duet.
The piece was entitled “no more crime, babe” and in the final video it was properly mangled and distorted as I am used to do in most of my audio-visuals, for that is an artistic code with a precise purpose. The echoing song mixed with the frightening noise of laments in the background still gives me shivers.
Just like poems, music lyrics are sometimes hard to explain, take it as it is:
The archetypal concept at the base of this video is that life is violence in itself: it does not exist animal, vegetable or thing begotten without guilt, nobody can be considered excluded from this principle, because any thing that exists do this to the detriment of some other cosmic substance, feeding from it. From the point of view of cosmic unity, procreation is the archetype of violence or the imposition of an entity that wants to subtract space and substance from the cosmos.
The guilt is not of the new being, which is innocent since it can not decide to come into the world, but it consists in the procreation act per se, all the more if voluntary.
For this reason I wanted to compare this philosophical archetype with that contemporary and iconic manifestation of it: the police with anti riot equipment, that is simply individuals who carry out a job with the aim to live, to create a future for themselves and their own family, to create a space for their own offspring. The primal violence aimed to impose one's own self.
I had a clear and simple idea for the visual part: a couple in anti riot suits spinning in an idyll of love, in slow-motion, which I preferred to create with computer generated graphics to make the task easier and cheaper. But before I had to create the music.
In contrast to the slow-motion picture, I wished to create a hysterical music, shocking, with numbly violent thou sarcastically sad lyrics, a messing and dull beat appropriate to idiocy, this is to say the mental confusion necessary to the bursting of violence. What more appropriate than the syncopated beat of ska music? Do not get me wrong, I do not dislike ska beat, just this piece has evolved from ska: it is skat.
I spare you the details of the music composition and arrangement, which took very long for my personal conceptual struggles. For the two non-professional singers I wanted a stereotypical rude testosterone male voice of the Barry White kind (James Smith) and a charming smile female voice (Barbara Johnson), which would have to interweave in a call-and-response lyrics with chorus refrains, recalling certain sugary love songs. That is why the ska rhythm is preceded by a short sensual duet.
The piece was entitled “no more crime, babe” and in the final video it was properly mangled and distorted as I am used to do in most of my audio-visuals, for that is an artistic code with a precise purpose. The echoing song mixed with the frightening noise of laments in the background still gives me shivers.
Just like poems, music lyrics are sometimes hard to explain, take it as it is:
“no more crime, babe” lyrics, 2008-2009
(fuchsia = female voice, blue = male voice, none = together)
babe...
you hurt me so much...
now babe...
you and me
right here
oh... babe...
now and forever
all those times are gone
no more crime, babe
no more crime
one day we fell down
down here, from the highs
a lightning of love
broke into your life
dirty and absurd
land of corruption
oh, what a bad place!
no! we don't deserve it
hurry up! let's make a clean sweep
put your gloves and fight the scum
hurry up! let's make it your way
aim your weapons to the crowd
bogeys and wackos
sack them and shock away
hostiles and half-breed
give them a better life
ungentle black rags
squeeze them in trendy boots
unhealthy strangelove
knows that we are here to stay!
hurry up! let's make a clean sweep
put your gloves and fight the scum
hurry up! let's make it your way
aim your weapons to the crowd
we did it for love
why don't you understand
we did it for you
we did it for them all
they didn't get it
and now they are all dead
we tried to free them
but they did not understand
anyways they were just garbage
now this place is looking fine
what a better world for justice
where this love is your and mine
anyways they were just garbage
now this place is looking fine
what a better world for justice
where this love is your and mine
you hurt me so much...
now babe...
you and me
right here
oh... babe...
now and forever
all those times are gone
no more crime, babe
no more crime
one day we fell down
down here, from the highs
a lightning of love
broke into your life
dirty and absurd
land of corruption
oh, what a bad place!
no! we don't deserve it
hurry up! let's make a clean sweep
put your gloves and fight the scum
hurry up! let's make it your way
aim your weapons to the crowd
bogeys and wackos
sack them and shock away
hostiles and half-breed
give them a better life
ungentle black rags
squeeze them in trendy boots
unhealthy strangelove
knows that we are here to stay!
hurry up! let's make a clean sweep
put your gloves and fight the scum
hurry up! let's make it your way
aim your weapons to the crowd
we did it for love
why don't you understand
we did it for you
we did it for them all
they didn't get it
and now they are all dead
we tried to free them
but they did not understand
anyways they were just garbage
now this place is looking fine
what a better world for justice
where this love is your and mine
anyways they were just garbage
now this place is looking fine
what a better world for justice
where this love is your and mine
The final audio-visual starts and ends with a green video noise and distorted echoes: in my vision that is the crying of the victims. There arises the police couple spinning in the idyll of love, until they are enveloped by a whirl of rose petals like drops of the sacrificial victims' blood.
The plot continues quite plain and simple: the spinning couple fades away into the void of cosmos and into the green noise, recalling the archetypal philosophical question: what is the aim, the meaning of life?
Here is the video.
Here is the video.
