Monocorpse returns with another video from his The Comfort Of Strangers limited edition 12″ out now on Gooiland Elektro/Enfant Terrible. Earlier this month we tuned into the visuals for “On The Other Side Of The Mirror,” and this week the artist returns with another self-directed video for EP’s other B-side track, “Being Reduced to Nothing.”
Using Doom’s catatonic focus within the perview of techno, Monocorpse drills in on a repeating bassline that reverberates with menace. The dull thud of a kick drum strikes with unnerving force before electrically charged snare patterns flash with mercurial light across the track’s bass heavy backdrop. Complete with dialogue from the film adaptation of Harold Pinter‘s The Comfort of Strangers, Monocorpse does not shy away from traversing difficult psychological terrain on “Being Reduced to Nothing.”
The video opens with a series of text that loosely translates from the French as, “There is only one woman left/And one man/And an ocean of blood answered.” From this dramatic beginning, strange, looped scenarios play out on repeat, often with the words “male” and “female” across the screen, as well as, more cryptically, the word “north.” What it all means might be difficult to discern, but looped images of a man photographing a woman seem to point to the power dynamics of the “male gaze.” Coupled with the video’s opening text, “Being Reduced to Nothing” poetically evokes the ancient struggle between the sexes, while never reducing it’s enduring mystery to an easy analysis.
