pride week: sigur rós: viðrar vel til loftárása.

Sigur Rós makes music so beautiful it can convey pain. So exquisitely fine that it can carry the darkest feelings we know and make it understandable to everyone.

I really started obsessing about Sigur Rós about five years ago, and I’ve always loved this song, “viðrar vel til loftárása” (which translates into “Good Weather For Airstrikes”) from their second album, “Ágætis byrjun.” And even though the vid dropped in 2002, now that it’s Pride Week in Toronto it feels like the perfect time to take a second look at it.

There’s a certain kind of dehumanization that goes with homophobia. It makes you feel an incredibly specific sort of loss that’s impossible to describe to anyone that hasn’t felt it. Intellectually it can be understood. Morally it can be related to. Human compassion and decency knows that pain is pain and no human should ever intentionally make another human feel it. But it can only be known by those who have lived it.

I think it’s because the most beautiful human emotion – love – is accosted by the most evil human emotion – hatred. Many people are discriminated against for many reasons, but to have your sense of love attacked so caustically by people that don’t know you is a particular kind of poison. It’s like the purest form of our existence being attacked by our darkest. Being told that not only you, but also your universally common desire to share yourself with someone you love is wrong.

I don’t think anyone who hasn’t personally experienced it can truly know how it feels. But this video, in combination with the soul-stirring music of Sigur Rós, comes as close as I’ve ever seen. During the week when more than a million people will come to Toronto to celebrate everything that joins and unites us, this vid can give everyone insight into, and hopefully motivation to keep fighting against, the fear, bigotry, and ignorance that some people use to try to separate us and destroy the human right to love.

dead soul brothers + eoin heaney: over time.

If you’ve got epilepsy, seriously don’t watch this. A flashy, atomic, electric video for Dead Soul Brothers’ “Over Time”, directed by Eoin Heaney.

nizlopi + monkeehub: jcb song.

When I was little, my Dad would take me on road trips. He’d fold down the back seat of our family’s silver Ford Capri and I’d make a nest in the back from sleeping bags, Tintins, and several boxes of Smarties. Then we’d drive for hours and I’d try to convince him to find a hotel with a pool.

My favourite was when we’d get to the Okanagan Valley, buy cherries from a little shack on the highway, eat them, and then hurl the pits out the open sun roof. Speeding into the mountains, throwing seeds into the sky…

This is one of my favourite songs ever, and it reminds me of that. Happy Father’s Day.

terri timely: synesthesia.

This is officially one of my top ten favourite short films of all time. And I’ve seen a lot of shorts. That’s just how kick ass this is.

So, this isn’t news to anyone who know me, but I’m obsessed with colour and all of its effects on us; in art and motion, and also psychologically and emotionally. I’m totally fascinated with Synesthesia, a “neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.”

synesthesia

It’s an incredible sensory mix-up. Some people can hear colours. Some taste words. Some read in sounds. Terri Timely (made up of directing duo Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasy) have created an absolutely stellar film interpretation of synesthesia. It’s quirky, lush, imagination run wild. Fascinating at each step and totally unpredictable, this is totally up my alley and blew me right away.

animal collective + danny perez: summertime clothes.

To Do List: 1. Watch this video. 2. Take shrooms. 3. Watch this video again. 4. Repeat. 5. Get Pizza.

Psychedelic goodness for “Summertime Clothes” from one of the greats, Animal Collective, directed by Danny Perez.

lorenzo fonda: ten things i have learned about the sea.

I crossed the Atlantic one a ship a few years ago and after it I knew I wasn’t the same anymore. Director Lorenzo Fonda has also felt the powerful insights that only the ocean can reveal, and in his beautiful short film “Ten Things I Have Learned About The Sea” he details them.

tenthings

The visuals are stunning – a sort of transcendent combo of nature and the ships man has built to traverse across it. The  industrial symmetry and mechanical serenity in the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky.

I also have to give props to Fonda for saying under the film “it is 104 mb, there’s no low res version and it is 10 minutes long. let it load. if you don’t have patience or don’t know me personally, you might not want to watch this.” The confidence of that speaks for itself.

Click here to watch “Ten Things I Have Learned About The Sea.”

Via No Zap

takashi murakami + mamoru hosoda: superflat first love.

I love Murakami. I love Anime. I love brightly coloured flower bombs and anything that reminds me of Astro Boy. So basically this video had me at hello.

Murakami’s collaboration with Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton are one of the most lauded (and profitable) team ups in fashion history. Continuing in the vein of “Superflat Monogram”, Murakami’s latest Vuitton-athon “Superflat First Love” celebrates his six years working with the house.

Directed by Anime-master Mamoru Hosoda, it delivers everything you want it to: giant teddy bear animal things, space flight, giggling open-mouth Anime girls, and a time portal located inside a LV trunk. Yeah, it’s basically one big advertisement for Vuitton, and I’d rather see what these two could create without having to tie it back into that brand, but the film is so cute that I can’t resist it.

Via Feed

fever ray + mikel cee karlsson: triangle walks.

There are a few artists who I’ll automatically post their videos no matter what. They have automatic passes into my brain. The ethereal and fearless Fever Ray is one of those artists.

Her new video for “Triangle Walks”, directed by Mikel Cee Karlsson, is a very cool visual cock tease. Knowing full well that we always want more of the things we cannot see, more is hidden than shown. Which makes what is shown all the more tantalizing and interesting.

matt katsolis: dia de luz (day of light).

In Managua, Nicaragua, 1500 people live their lives inside a huge landfill called “La Chureca” (The Scavenging Place). Adults and children sift through piles of flaming trash looking for anything they can eat, fix, or recycle.

In “Dia De Luz” (Day Of Light), director Matt Katsolis and musician Braddigan, working with non-profit anti-poverty group Love, Light, & Melody, chronicle one full day in La Chureca and show us how hope can grow in the darkest of places.

This film is important for two big reasons: we need to acknowledge that places like this exist so we can hopefully work to stop it, and we need to absorb that if these people, in a place so devoid, can celebrate and find joy in their lives then the rest of us have no reason to not do the same.

quentin carnicelli + charles klipfel + jean-françois jégo: reulf.

I love this so much.

I totally relish the thought of little chromatic robots sneaking out from our most boring everyday cracks and corners and slowly transforming us into colours. I want to carry them all around in my pocket.

Université Paris VIII graduate students Quentin Carnicelli, Charles Kilpfel, and  Jean-François Jégo imagined a drab, greyed out Paris where miniature painters come to our visual rescue. The beginning sort of reminds me of Sony’s famous Bravia spot “Bunnies.” Plus, Ihave to admit, I get nostalgic for any sort of benvolent little robot things because it remind me of one of my fave childhood movies, “*batteries not included.”

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