All images courtesy of the artist; GIFs by the author, via.
Paired together, Christophe Thockler’s self-taught stop-motion expertise and French musician Colleen’s beguiling composition “I’m Kin,” from her fifth album Captain of None (Thrill Jockey), fall nowhere short of fascinating. As with his previous works for artist duo Victoria+Jean, which included marble mayhem and pyrotechnics, “I’m Kins” is chock full of quickly shifting scenes with sanguine leaves, gravity resistant liquids, and crumbling mounds of minerals.
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“I created the video with various materials,” Thockler tells The Creators Project, “in fact, everything I could gather that was interesting to shoot with minimal light, like glass cups, vases, glass cubes, even kitchen accessories! Everything that can do bokehs or light reflections. I also wanted to use organic elements, that's why I used stones, ice and water, dead flowers… these elements fit the lyrics so well. The blood (I already worked with in another video) was a mix of corn syrup, black, red, orange and green ink.”
Thockler’s melody of materials prove as elusive and singular as the French musician’s lyrics and layers of instruments, shot either out of focus or in dizzying succession. To achieve this effect—and keep his audience engaged throughout the song’s 6:03 duration—Thockler strove to capture Colleen’s ambience by “’telling without telling’,” he says. “I wanted to illustrate and emphasize the lyrics but at the same time staying mysterious, metaphorical and full or onirism. I wanted people to have a glimpse of what may happening, I want them to imagine their own meaning too, […] that's why I chose to use organic material and enhance the images with numerical aspects like flickering, chromatic aberrations, superposition of images.”Below, a few moments on the screen and behind-the-scenes of Thockler’s atmospheric stop-motion.
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