she's one of us
Two nights ago I watched the film She's One Of Us. It's a kind of dark, lean, and stylish thriller that takes place in French suburbia. Suburban life, the kind that is often lauded in America, seems to be a breeding ground for strange nightmares in the French unconscious.
The director went with a soundtrack of muted minimal electronic washes with pointed glitch-like beats, the relentless continuity of this sound world creates a buildup of introversion that only rarely found outlet in the visual activity. The protagonist/antagonist is a quiet woman who seems to have lived as a loner her whole life, with no social skill and deep distrust of larger society. As she finally learns how to navigate contemporary French culture, she does so in an off-kilter way, often killing, mauling, and cheating those around her.
As havoc is created onscreen, the music remains quiet, impenetrable, and focused. I love these plays of incongruity, finding materials that don't match, but that don't match in just the right way. The square can't receive the circle, but the way in which it is deflected is fascinating.
In Here. There. (Distance Study 1), my collaboration with Mr. Jano Cortijo, a wonderful artist who happens to also be my boyfriend (currently in long-distance mode, but he did blog here all-too-briefly), I'm trying to work through the video he is making, figuring out how my music will "not fit" in just the right way. His approach is one of quiet and poignant contemplation, simplicity working as a means to convey a crystaline conceptual point, much in the style of say Felix Gonzales-Torres, an artist we both deeply admire.
Me, on the other hand, I'm some sort of multi-striped creature that points sonic fragments in every direction. But these contradictions set up an interesting interplay. The trick, again, is finding that "not-fitting" that fits in just the right way.