ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse)

ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING
(a septet for the apocalypse)

There is an unshakeable feeling in the air that the end is nigh, yet somehow you find yourself quietly rooting for the storm, as if a part of you is tired of waiting, wondering when the world will finally fall apart – by lot, by fate, by our own hands, or by the will of the gods – almost daring them to grant your wish. Your gut us hungry for chaos, itching to chase after storms and run headlong into the fire; to watch society break down, and find out what’s truly important.

The apocalypse is one of the oldest fantasies we have, but it’s not about skipping to the end of the story. It’s a longing for revelation, a revealing of what we already know but cannot see: that none of this is guaranteed, and there’s no such thing as ‘ordinary life’; that even just getting through the day should feel like the miracle it is; that our civilisation is just an agreement that could be revoked at any time; that we have no other choice but to survive, to build a shelter, and find each other in the storm.

[[This piece is a companion piece to ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS.
Both works are in deliberate conversation with one another, forming a kind of diptych for the end of times.]]

The backbone to ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING (a septet for the apocalypse) is a series of seven video pieces I have edited from scratch, repurposing existing music and video footage. On the one hand this is a gesture towards notions of sustainability and circular economy, as well as a recycling practices. On the other hand, it is a commentary on our culture's artophagous tendencies.

Each of the seven videos is soundtracked by an audio edit that cannibalises different versions of a specific pop song (a capella, instrumental, electronic...). The songs range from one released in 1973 ['The Way We Were' by Barbara Streisand], through several released in the 1980s ['Don't Stop Believin'' by Journey, 1981; 'I want to break free' by Queen, 1984], to songs from the 1990s ['What's Up?' by 4 Non Blondes and 'Things Can Only Get Better' by D:Ream, 1933; and 'Ironic' by Alanis Morissette]. This temporal range is not accidental, given that our current climatological, environmental, and resource-driven crises act as a conceptual subtext for the work, and that the decades between the 1 970s and 1990s have been critical ones. I have also chosen these songs because I remember them well from my childhood and adolescence, and because they are popular classics. Moreover, their often cheerful or sentimental tone is in stark contrast with the video edit that accompanies each track.

Each loop tracks is juxtaposed with edited video footage found online, and which has been slowed down, sped up, or reversed.. News footage, corporate audio-visuals, a fashion show, advertisements and old films. The tracks deploy a deliberately wide range of different kinds of found material. Collapsing buildings, blooming flowers, distribution centres, melting glaciers, conspicuous displays of wealth, abject poverty, raging wildfires, the opening of COP26, etc. The result is a potent weave of urgent resonances.

Visually, the videos operate like a series of mandalas by juxtaposing central and peripheral images, developing friction between the images, as well as between the images and the music. Each video serves as a kind of 'revelation', touching on a particular issue/theme (i.e. the collapse of capitalism, the various effects of climate breakdown, economic inequality, technology and the waste it produces…). The videos are bookended by two audio tracks remixing two songs by Laurie Anderson, whose ghostly influence permeates the project. These bookend tracks establish the looped and obsessive qualities of the seven main tracks, as well as highlighting their prophetic and oracular nature.

By creating moments of acceleration, suspension, and deceleration throughout the different tracks the musical dramaturgy of ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING takes the audience on a charged tonal and emotional journey. Its use of obsessive audio-visual loops aims to induce a quasi-trancelike sate in the spectators, inviting them to contemplate [the ending of things?] some of the most prescient challenges the world faces today. The work does not offer ready-made solutions or manufacture ready-made hope for the audience. Instead, following a logic of excess and near-collapse, it deliberately rhapsodises hopelessness and doom whilst casting a critical eye on notions like nostalgia, progress, and the human spirit.

[If presented as a live performance-screening, taking place in front of and alongside the projections, the piece would feature live components: simple repeated choreographies of bold movements and gestures; and a series of collaged texts acting as transitions between each video (as a kind of poetic-absurdist incantations inspired by oracular spirit of the ancient sibyls).]