kagablog

The 2004 video clip “Kraftmusichall” alias “Nique ta mère” (“Fuck Your Mother”) contains a very strong dimension of transgression. Its meaning is somewhat difficult to capture, but the flood of images is very powerful and solid. To music from the industrial group Tempsion, Kaganof shows that new life is prepared through the satisfying of inner urges, and this flood of ill-assorted images lasting 10 minutes reaches its climax – piss on the face of an old man, who is thus revived and liberated from his status as one of the living dead. The industrial music, a mix of the noises of our artificial environment, brilliantly accompanies the explosion of shapes which also symbolises the demographic explosion of modern societies. In this clip the KuKluxKlan meets Georges Bataille, coming back to the starting point of the first film.

Aryan Kaganof produced the clip “Why Do You Want to Believe?” by the new group ELECTRO MAGNETIC PULSE in 2007. Kaganof produced this vital clip for the very hard eponymous song – “vital” for it is overflowing with energy. It begins with a round, black iris which opens to the audience. A frenzy of rhythmic music follows, with images of the group performing in a studio. The shots are short inserts because the track is very fast. And the musical madness is accompanied on a visual plane by images both in colour and in black and white, purely hallucinatory and psychedelic images of this corrosive trio interpreting these slightly hysterical tracks. Their singer Evert Steyn smokes a cigarette and speaks to us, his face voluntarily deformed by a wide-angle lens. And the sub-heading with the group’s full name reappears constantly before the different parts of the clip, which lasts for 7 minutes.

The second of Kaganof’s recent clips does not comply with the aesthetic laws of the genre because its length. It was also produced in 2007. It is 10 minutes long and its title very metaphorical – “Houtkamp and De Klerk. How we learned to stop worrying and love Mandela”. The names are those of the leaders of Pow Ensemble. The clip is filled with “political science fiction” quotations (we prefer this term to “politically incorrect”). In the beginning, the presenter warns us that people who have died recently have come back to life. This is the clip’s starting point. More out-of-the ordinary quotations follow, leaving us with a sensation of instability which is quickly vanquished by the new scene the author sets. This time, the scene is set without formal excess, if we leave aside the intentionally strong colouring of the improvised jazz group. With simple, hand-made effects, this time Kaganof edits with longer-lasting shots which aren’t particularly mobile, as in the previous clip. Pow Ensemble’s music is not melodic, and gives us the impression of a free and improvised score on the same theme. The multiplied images, with colours which disappear at times, mixed with their stylistic opposite (in other words, an excess of colour) as well as the artistically blurred technique, underline the improvised dimension of the track and the significant freedom of Kaganof’s directing.

Dionysos ANDRONIS
translated from the french by lucy lyall grant