Friday, July 14, 2006

Incinerate - Sonic Youth (d. Claire Denis)

Context: Excited by the announcement that French auteur Claire Denis has lent her visual genius to Sonic Youth, I began trolling YouTube every couple of weeks, finally locating the video today.

Thought: In L'Intrus, Trouble Every Day, and Friday Night, Denis's camera transforms the human body into something like an alien landscape, the contours of human flesh lit and shot like a desert on Io. Astonishingly radical in a narrative film, Denis' tight shots of pixellated body parts are little more than just another decorative effect in the music video context.

Cool video, but more intriguing in concept than practice, sorta like Sonic Youth's score for Olivier Assayas's Demonlover.