NY TIMES
Rock Music Videos as an Art Form With a Festival of Its Very Own

May 28, 1999 Happening across the video for Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," now in heavy rotation on MTV, channel surfers may wonder whether they've dropped into a dream state. Credited to the Torrance Community Dance Group, the video follows a singularly inept group of terpsichoreans as they set up a boombox at a crowded multiplex and leap, twist and flutter to this English hit maker's exuberant dance music. A wobbly camera captures moviegoers dodging the dancers and looking aghast at their creative efforts. The whole affair seems more like a guerrilla art attack than a commercial for a pop song.

The video, actually directed by Spike Jonze and Roman Coppola, two well-established innovators in the field, is a good-natured strike against the genre's cliche's. Its low production values and ordinary-looking cast shake the habits of viewers accustomed to the music video formula of celebrity allure and programmed emotion.

A prototype for "Praise You" will be shown along with other innovative music videos and advertisements on Sunday at the Faze Festival, organized by Aden Ikram, a 26-year-old New York University student and fledgling television producer, and sponsored by Levi's as part of Giant Step's Miles Ahead series. Screenings take place at the Cantor Film Center in Greenwich Village.

Beyond videos, the program features talks by the ad-altering graffiti artist Kaws and the director Little X, and the United States premiere of the Levi's "Flat Eric" ad campaign, which has set off a European craze for its puppet protagonist, Flat Eric.

"This isn't just a music video festival," Ikram said in a telephone interview. "It's really about what I call 'subvertising.' Everyone is so media-savvy now; we've been bombarded with images. I'm looking for the ones that put a twist on things, that are really intelligent and move you."

Although Ikram claims inspiration from the media watch group Adbusters, he does not share the anti-corporate stance of that group and many other media critics. "Business is an intrinsic part of the media, and that's good," he said. "But business should not cater to the lowest common denominator. You can sell, but don't use the typical pitch."

The Faze Festival reflects Ikram's optimistic view that originality and self-awareness can turn consumer culture into an esthetic force and a source of social commentary. It focuses on directors who take advantage of the borderline status of music videos, by nature both art and advertising, to try approaches that might not be welcome in mainstream television or film.

Featured artists range from the illustrious to the newly emerging. Jonas Akerlund, who won a Grammy Award for Madonna's "Ray of Light" video, reaches the deeper level Ikram insists is possible. In his video for Metallica's "Turn the Page," he applies the song's message of rock star road weariness to a day in the life of a single mother who supports her daughter through stripping and prostitution. Its empathetic portrait of the woman, who explains herself in brief pseudo-documentary segments, lends voice to a female body more typically used in videos as fantasy fodder.

Another reinterpretation of the "video babe" comes from Little X, who apprenticed with the hip-hop video kingpin Hype Williams. Little X's clip for Redman's "I'll Be Dat," to be shown at the festival, pokes fun at the bouncing flesh and flashing cash of Williams's videos and extends its parody to cereal commercials and psychic hot lines.

"A record company just wants a director to shoot their artists and make it pretty," Little X said in a telephone interview from his New York home. "But as a director you're supposed to take that music and bring something new to it. It's one of the few mediums where something has been completed and you have to do more with it, along with television commercials and writing for sitcoms or movie sequels."

An intellectual connection with the artist whose work he is interpreting, including the sardonic Redman, allows for the best process, said Little X. Moby, the multifaceted musician and early popularizer of techno music in America, is one artist who seeks such partnerships. A video directed by Mike Mills for his new song, "Run On," which uses a reverse narrative to depict a modern-day fairy tale, will be shown in the festival. In it, Moby plays a meek office worker who finds a better job in the afterlife.

"I've said to directors that I don't have much ego invested in this," Moby said. "I'm realistic. I'm 33 years old and balding and not the most attractive guy in the world. I'd rather just go in and be myself."

He said that the multilayered structure of electronic music made it well suited to novel scenarios. "Electronic music often has a more visual quality than conventional pop," he said. "You have a wider palette of sounds."

Aphex Twin is another electronic artist willing to abandon beauty conventions and create challenging visual images. The devilish musician's work with the director Chris Cunningham is the hallmark of video's avant-garde. Two Aphex Twin clips, "Come to Daddy" and the new "Windowlicker," will be shown at Faze. "He takes all the elements we're so used to, and twists them in a frightening manner," Ikram said of Cunningham, a special-effects master whose pre-video career included designing Sylvester Stallone's suit for "Judge Dredd."

Perhaps the most fearless self-transformer in pop is Bjork, the Icelandic singer whose fleshly make-overs mirror her mutating sonic experiments. Faze presents a premiere of Chris Cunningham's clip for "All Is Full of Love," in which Bjork becomes metallic, playing two robots awash in lubricating fluids and erotic desire. The video's sensuality complements the song, but its real innovation is its utterly subdued pace, which forces viewers to do what television rarely requires: slow down and really observe the images beckoning them.

Whether through pseudo-realism, parody or formal innovation, the work shown at the Faze Festival offers a respite from the aggressive emptiness of most advertising.

Mr. Ikram, who provides commentary on work at the Faze Web site (www.fazeonline.com), seeks to make the program a semiannual event.

"What the Sundance Film Festival was to Cannes, I'd like to be to the Clios and the One Show," he said of the advertising industry's biggest awards ceremonies. "I'd like to stay focused on the best thing about advertising: the challenge of presenting something that is both entertaining and a sell."

Article written by Ann Powers, taken from The New York Times, Friday, May 14, 1999.