Michel Gondry + Bjork

I was fortunate enough the other day to rip a whole heap of stuff off John's portable hard drive, including a collection of Michel Gondry videos, a large proportion of which were music videos for Icelandic 'pop'? artist Bjork [who now also collaborates with the ex Unit 15 video artists Lynn Fox]. I had come across analysis of the work of Michel Gondry before, notably a documentary of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...

For me Gondry's approach seemed to centre on simple low-tech tricks with little or no computer trickery; in the film these are just that, tricks, but in the below Bjork video for Beachlorette, this technique, or method is not hidden, but celebrated.

In this particular video, Gondry exaggerates, pierces and manipulates the divide between the audience and the artist/performer, using multiple media and stage sets, all ultimately fed through a television set, or the internet:

Another video, Hyperballad, does go beyond the singular celluloid surface, and collages various angles and images onto the frame. This reminded me of the Bryan Cantley drawing exercises the Masters students participated in recently; layering, distorted perspectives and coded surface textures are common to both artists... I guess it all leads back to the imperative of suggesting altered states within a static 2-d frame...