Immortel (Ad Vitam)‘ is a French-produced film in English directed by Enki Bilal and based on his graphic novels. It came out in 2004, and I actually heard about it and saw the film’s fantastic poster (marked ‘Coming Soon’) in theaters but never actually noticed when the film was released. It’s pretty strange that such a film would get a theatrical release in Singapore.

Anyway, I finally saw it a few months ago. Like any film, it has its weaknesses - the acting doesn’t always work and the idea to have CG human characters alongside actors makes sense in theory but doesn’t quite work out practically and can be rather confusing. However it’s definitely worth a watch because there are some things about it that are undeniably unique.

The plot is completely insane - in a good way of course. The Egyptian god Horus plays a primary role - he descends upon the city in a floating pyramid and inhabits the one-legged body of a fugitive (Nikopol) cryogenically-frozen for 30 years in order to impregnate blue-haired, white-skinned Jill who isn’t human. In this future, most humans have genetically altered themselves to the point that they’re mostly synthetic - hence the CG human characters.

I believe this film was one of the first few ‘digital backlot’ films to be made, and visually I have to say it’s really fantastic. Okay so the CG effects do look a bit dated, but really with art direction and concept design this brilliant it really doesn’t bother me that much. Also, I absolutely adore everything about Jill Bioskop’s look.

Yelena Yemchuk has done some beautiful work for the Smashing Pumpkins - all of which I feel serves as a perfect visual accompaniment to their music. She’s directed the videos for ‘Zero‘ and ‘Thirty-Three‘ as well as a lot of photography and portraits of the band. She also appeared in the video for ‘Stand Inside Your Love‘. I think her commercial and fashion work is equally wonderful - the world she creates with her photography has this fantastic/fairy-tale element to it that I really love.

More of her work not found on her official site here at Art Department’s website.

Samuel Bayer has directed a lot of music videos that I’ve thought were really awesome. And much like was the case with Andrea Giacobbe, I didn’t know until recently that one person was behind all these videos. You can view some of them on his official site here, but most of them are available on youtube. Here are some that I like:

• Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet With Butterfly Wings: By far my favourite video of Bayer’s. I saw this on TV when I was 11 and thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my entire life up to that point. Well, this and Soundgarden’s video for ‘Black Hole Sun’.
• Metallica - Until It Sleeps: I love that they re-created images from Bosch’s paintings in this one.
• David Bowie - The Heart’s Filthy Lesson: I think I like this song a lot more than the video - but it’s still a good video nonetheless. It just reminds me a little too much of NIN’s ‘Closer’ video.
• Hole - Doll Parts: I believe this is the video and song that got me interested in Hole when I was 13.
• Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains: I love this video through and through. And it’s from the only Garbage album that I like.
• Garbage - Stupid Girl
• The Cranberries - Ridiculous Thoughts: I’m really including this only because there’s a young Elijah Wood in it. Seriously. Anyway, Bayer also directed their video for Zombie, which I think is better than this one.

It seems I’ve been an admirer of Andrea Giacobbe’s for quite a few years now without even realizing it. I’ve recognized his images of Trent Reznor, the Smashing Pumpkins, Stephen Malkmus and 12 Rounds’ Claudia Sarne here and there on the web and they’ve always stood out to me, but I never imagined they were all taken by the same person. He also directed the Garbage music video for ‘Push It‘ and as I was watching that on youtube the other night, I decided I had to check out his site where I found many more wonderful images. He’s also done video work for Nine Inch Nails on their With Teeth tour for the tracks ‘Eraser‘ and ‘Right Where It Belongs‘.

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I never expected David Lynch to have this point of view, but I really like what he has to say in this interview with the Guardian about the link between meditation and the creative process - it’s really quite beautiful. (Note: I really don’t know anything about Transcendental Meditation as a specific technique. I just like what he has to say here.)

“TM [Transcendental Meditation] is a mental technique. It’s an ancient form of meditation that allows any human being to dive within and transcend and experience the unbounded, infinite ocean of pure consciousness. Pure vibrant consciousness, bliss, intelligence, creativity, love, power, energy - all there within. At the base of mind, the base of matter, is this field. And it’s there. Modern science has just discovered the unified field by going deeper and deeper and deeper into matter. And there it was: a field of oneness, unity. They can’t go in there with their instruments and everything, but any human being can go dive within through subtle levels of mind and intellect, transcend and experience this field. When you experience this deepest field, it’s a beautiful experience, and experiencing it enlivens it and you grow in consciousness.

You grow in creativity and intelligence. And the side effect is that negativity starts to recede. Things like hate, anger and depression, sorrow, anxieties - these things start to recede and you live life in more freedom, more flow of ideas, more appreciation and understanding of everything.

It’s so beautiful for working on projects. It’s a field of knowingness - you enliven that and you get this kind of intuitive thing going. It’s so beautiful for the arts, for any walk of life. In Vedic science, this field is called Atma, the self and there’s a line, “Know thyself.” In the Bible they say, “First seek the kingdom of heaven which lies within and all else will be added unto you.” You dive within, you experience this, you unfold it and you’re unfolding totality. The human has this potential and they have names for this potential: enlightenment, liberation, salvation, fulfilment - huge potential for the human being. And we don’t need to suffer. You enliven this thing and you realise that bliss is our nature.”

“I thought when I started meditation that I was going to get real calm and peaceful and it’s going to be over. It’s not that way, it’s so energetic. That’s where all the energy and creativity is. Everything that is a thing has emerged out of this field. So it’s tremendous creativity. And you don’t lose your edge, you get more, stronger feeling for something and it can be magnified. And you don’t get sleepy and laidback in this kind of flat-line peace. It’s a dynamic peace. It’s very powerful, it’s where all the power is. So the thing is you can make all these stories but you’re separate from it. And that’s the key.”

There’s this really interesting interview with Polish photographer and physicist Andrzej Dragan by Paola Bonini called Art Is Artificial. In it there are things I agree with and things I disagree with, but overall it makes for quite a fascinating read. Some excerpts below.

“I think this proves my point: what people think to be true or not, even if you are Einstein, has little to do with reality. Our opinion about truth is not the most important - the empirical method is. Truth can only be discussed when it can be tested, otherwise it’s meaningless. So what a silly expectation that it should have anything to do with photography, which is basically not a very ambitious, in this comparison, way of entertaining? Art is not natural, not true. As its name says - art is artificial way of bringing joy, even in Polish - ’sztuka jest sztuczna’. Feeding, defecating and breeding are natural - art is artificial.”

You’ve mentioned portraits. What do you think they are?
“Portrait is an illusion of looking at a real person. People expect portraits to reveal something about the persons and their stories. I don’t know whether this is true, whether it can be generally true, but if it were, it would be impossible to portray someone you don’t know: how can you say something about a stranger? In that case, the portrait might just reveal the photographer’s impression of that person, but that impression might have very little, if anything, in common with that individual. I don’t care about the definitions. I do what I do. If people don’t want to call them portraits, that’s ok by me. I’m not interested in names.”

Is there any conceptual common ground between your career as an artist and as a physicist?
“Well, first of all I would like to underline I don’t consider myself an artist. I don’t like the sophisticated background of this word. But to answer your question, I don’t know whether there is a connection, but I certainly was educated by several years of scientific studies. For example, I know that sometimes I can get disturbing because, if someone says something that doesn’t sound true to me, I start to investigate right away, and this can make people nervous. But the thing is that when people - including myself - say something, most of the times they get it wrong. You may say that the Earth goes around the Sun in circles. But if you carefully study this working hypothesis, you realize it’s not correct. It’s really hard to say something true. Science is a method to investigate which statements are not true. What comes out is that only very few statements can be labelled not to be false. And scientists are aware that even these might be only temporarily ‘true’, because after a while you find out that after all they weren’t, and something else becomes true instead. So you see, it’s difficult to say what is true and what is not. There’s little truths I am 100% convinced about, and there are truths I think I can partially guess - let’s say I have different degrees of certainty about different phenomena - but what I’m interested in is becoming aware of a certainty of my knowledge. I have absolutely no idea about the truthfulness of some realities, but I have to accept it, I have no choice. I prefer not knowing that being wrong or believing. And obviously I don’t know most things, but I want to be able to distinguish between those I have some sort of idea about and those I cannot know at all. This is what matters in science. But I’m not quite sure this has to do with photography. When I take pictures I don’t pay any attention to that, I don’t think about truth. Some people don’t even agree about calling my work photography, because according to them it does not obey to certain rules. But I don’t subscribe to those rules. Rules are basically prescriptions to those who cannot think themself. Ironically, ‘breaking some rules’ has become a new rule in photography - what a nonsense. Obligation to follow rules or truths in photography is not even a thought. It is some sort of ridiculous thought protesis. Just think of black and white photography - I mean, did you ever see anyone on the street in black and white?”