Context?
Norwegian experimentalist JENNY HVAL released her ridiculously good track That Battle Is Over a few months ago (you can read about how much we enjoyed here). Now the song has a video, directed by Hval’s bandmate and filmmaker Zia Anger.
Why Should I Watch This?
That Battle Is Over is a sarcastic run through a post-ideology world, where people collapse into unthinking passivity and consumption. And the video explores the same idea. Women (including former HOLE bassist Melissa Auf der Maur) take part in stereotypes of female activity (cooking, playing with a child, putting on make-up) in a blurry, disconnected manner. The slow-moving nature of the video and the dark, dingy lighting gives it a dreamlike quality, as the women in the clip start to spiral out of normality-what happens, as HVAL says, ‘on the edge of history’. Anger says ‘The female experience is far from singular (and even further from this white, suburban, American-retro dream), yet around every corner there is a common pain, a wisdom of ecstasy, and an obsession with the uncanny that we all share. Collaborating with an entirely female creative team (with the support of a few great gentlemen) gave birth to an exploration of Jenny’s song and an inquiry into the sarcasm that pulses through it.’
Anything Else?
JENNY HVAL’s new album Apocalypse, girl is out on June 9th on Sacred Bones Records, and she goes on tour this summer including shows in Cologne, Berlin and Hamburg in June.
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