In Memoriam - Alexis Graphic design and video editing: Yukao NagemiOriginal music: Camille EmailleVideo credits: Parc d'Armorique (Les vaches de Read more
Lola Ajima (composer) Extreme cold environments appeal an imaginary of vast and hostile landscapes, silent, almost dead. Isskjutning evokes a Read more
Super Bebo (musician and composer) Super Bebo's single 'Taw Tra'Discover more of Super Bebo's music on SoundCloudMusic: Written, recorded, produced Read more
Lola Ajima (composer) Holes in the earth have since the beginning of mankind been considered as entries to the underworld. Read more
Le vert de l’herbe
In Memoriam – Alexis
Graphic design and video editing: Yukao Nagemi Original music: Camille Emaille Video credits: Parc d’Armorique (Les vaches de Kervel) and Louis Perin
English: In March 2023, Alexis committed suicide a few days before his bankrupt farm went to court. Virtuous project of an organic farm on a preserved terroir of the Monts d’Arrée, Ferme de Kervel couldn’t become profitable quickly enough. The farm collapsed under financial pressure and low sales, despite the fact that the products sold well and were appreciated.
In his memory and for his loved ones, this film is a sensitive narration of this story and my personal feelings about this tragedy. I hope this film will serve the cause of farmers who dare to undertake agricultural projects that promote bio-diversity, animal welfare, preservation of natural terroirs and healthy local food. It is a support for these forms of resistance to agri-food capitalism and its toxic variations in terms of junk food, pesticides, over-indebtedness for the purchase of agricultural equipment, destruction of bio-diversity and the disappearance of small farms.
French: En mars 2023, Alexis s’est suicidé quelques jours avant que sa ferme en faillite ne passe devant le tribunal. Projet vertueux d’une ferme biologique sur un terroir préservé des Monts d’Arrée, la Ferme de Kervel n’a pas pu être rentabilisée assez rapidement. La ferme s’est effondrée sous la pression financière et la faiblesse des ventes, alors que les produits se vendaient bien et étaient appréciés.
En sa mémoire et pour ses proches, ce film est un regard sensible sur sa vie mêlé à des sentiments personnels sur cette tragédie. J’espère que ce film servira la cause des agriculteurs qui osent entreprendre des projets agricoles en faveur de la biodiversité, du bien-être animal, de la préservation des terroirs naturels et d’une alimentation locale saine. C’est un soutien à ces formes de résistance au capitalisme agroalimentaire et à ses déclinaisons toxiques en termes de malbouffe, de pesticides, de surendettement pour l’achat de matériel agricole, de destruction de la biodiversité et de disparition des petites exploitations.
With tenderness and affection, this film is dedicated to Alexis and his family: Valérie, Henri, Nino, Elouan, Louis, Charles, Lucie and Clément
A huge thank you for all the sensitive sharing with Alexis’ close relatives, your words were very precious to me: Clémence, Clément, Hoël, Ivanne, Louis, Marie, Nico and Philippe
Immense gratitude to Lola Ajima, Sylvia Calle, Véronique Caye, Jérôme Franck, Mireille Hannon, Benoît Habert and Elisabeth Piotelat for their insights and advice.
India ink drawings: Yukao Nagemi, 2022 Music performance and composition: Open Up? Sicker Man (2017, blankrecords)
Rivets is a critique of the progressive vision of industrial development since the 19th century. The rivet which allows the assembly of sheets and beams allows the most utopian architectural and mechanical projects, such as the Eiffel Tower, but also the construction of war machines with lethal accents. As Jean Tinguely so well depicted, the machine is an ambivalent being whose power escapes us. The rivet, a harmless element, is to the machine what the pixel is to the digital image. It is its cell and DNA. Discreet, because masked and embedded, and deafening, because assembled through hammering and constraint.
Modernity and human progress, symbolized by the rivet, this assembly part prisoner of the elements it unites, is a metaphor for the worker and the soldier, interchangeable and captive parts of structures that they weld and which ignore them.
A String Quartet…
“A string quartet is like a flock of birds” by Paul Novak (2021)
The video clip, based on Paul Novak’s nine meditations and dances for string quartet, is composed like a piece of music. It is played by four live graphical instruments: painting, digital drawing, automatic drawing, and a backtrack of video effects (particles, pixels, or both). The interpretation of Quatuor Lontano offers a wide range of emotions and expressions, and has been a powerful source of inspiration for this video work based on live drawing.
The graphical composition is aligned on the musical work, and takes from it, its energy, its expression, its dynamics. The theme of the birds is a constant reference in the visual under various metaphors: the flight of isolated birds or the flight of bird flocks, the birds’ silhouettes, the birds shapes… However, the visuals are abstract enough to leave space for the viewer’s imaginary, and own interpretation of the music. The clip is a carrier for aerial dreams, not a bird’s life lesson.
« A string quartet is like a flock of birds » by Paul Novak (2021)
Performed by Lontano Quartet (« La Montagne magique » , Cascavelle, 2022) Pauline Klaus, violin Florent Billy, violin Loïc Abdelfettah, viola Camille Renault, cello
Yukao Nagemi, graphics & video editing (c) 2023
Remerciements: Centre national de la musique, ADAMI, La copie privée
Dawn (Pассвет)
Mihail Afanasiev (Михаил Афанасьев), composer
Who are the lonely awake behind these lighted windows, sometimes until very late at night? This tale, about the intimacy of “ordinary lives”, describes the feverish expectation of dawn, as a release from the anxiety of the night vigil. The meditative and dramatic music beats to the rhythm of the breathing of the night lights, and gradually creates an anguish supported by the organic and mysterious images. The tension is resolved by the arrival of the saving and luminous dawn, which dispels the anxious visions of the night, but also cancels out its dark magic. Music: Mihail Afanasiev (Михаил Афанасьев) Video: Yukao Nagemi
Isskjutning
Lola Ajima (composer)
Extreme cold environments appeal an imaginary of vast and hostile landscapes, silent, almost dead. Isskjutning evokes a violent natural phenomenon, the collapse and overflow of ice due to gigantic tensions in the frozen matter. Initially composed in 2017 as an acousmatic piece by Lola Ajima, Isskjutning has been later a source if inspiration for a vector video by Yukao Nagemi. Acoustically and visually, the audiovisual composition is a stroll inside atmospheres evoked by an ice tsunami, from bright and peaceful periods, to dark and violent overwhelming bursts of permafrost landslide. It reminds us another majesty of polar areas, their capacity to unleash catastrophic collapses. Perhaps, it can also awake our consideration for the possible consequences of climate changes, and the destruction of the fragile balance in these regions. Music: Lola Ajima Video: Yukao Nagemi
The hectic life of a housewife through scenes evoking stress, frustration, anger and fear, anxiety and boredom. Both sarcastic and crude, Hausfrau is a symbolic fresco of the daily life that so many women experience. Their universe is bound to the walls of their home and their life is carefully measured and controlled by the ticking and ringing of the kitchen timer.
Electroacoustic composition by Lola Ajima and live drawing performance by Yukao Nagemi. The video combines electroacoustic music based on field recording, voice, cello and digital composition with ink and digital drawing, and live visual effects.
Par l’Oeil de la Cyclope Enceinte
Lola Ajima (composer)
Holes in the earth have since the beginning of mankind been considered as entries to the underworld. Making a journey inside the earth is a reflexive experience in which someone searches her/his own deep self. What lies inside this/our own mysterious darkness?
Gaston Bachelard writes about the holes in the earth as the eye of the Cyclopes. The Cyclops’ eye is like the crater of a volcano, it carries light and fire… but it is also through fire that burnt the Cyclops’ eye. Ulysse wounds the Cyclops’ eye through the same fire as the one it symbolizes, transforming an origin into a fatal ending. In the video work Par l’oeil de la cyclope enceinte, we climb through the eye of the Cyclops, deep into her round and living body, until we reach her belly, warm and pregnant. The female Cyclops has a tormented male alter ego that stands on the rim of a crater – desperate of obtaining her burning love. Will the birth of the Cyclops, symbolic eruption of her body, reveal a more intimate side of her gigantic ego, or will it set the land on fire. The video ending does not give the clue. While a dance of vestals gives hope for a better future, the three characters of the plot are irradiated by the volcano burst, and transformed into a final spray of burning metal. A forge for the ultimate incandescence.
Electroacoustic composition by Lola Ajima and live drawing performance by Yukao Nagemi. The video combines electroacoustic music based on field recording, voice, cello and digital composition with ink and digital drawing, and live visual effects.
