Scavenged stock footage is repurposed as a stomach-churning visual assault in the visceral video.
Leipzig’s Institut fuer Zukunft were forced to move their Balance Club/Culture Festival, which they describe as “an interface between club culture and social critique,” into an online space last year, hosting a web edition of the festival with the theme ‘Tender Squads’, considering the question: “which constellations and alliances can be imagined for the emancipatory potential of a different world to unfold?” Bringing together a wide variety of artists, including Lotic, Moesha13, Kelman Duran, Kablam, TSVI, Animistic Beliefs, Tadleeh, ABOGAR, Ana Bogner & Karam Saad, Avbvrn, Lamb Kebab and Doll Face, the festival marked the occasion by putting together a compilation featuring contributions from all of the above.
Lotic’s contribution, ‘Flourish’, sees the JANUS co-founder spinning together a barrage of misfiring percussion and ear-scraping sound design into a frazzled club stomper, a sound she describes as “the symbiosis of force and softness; the beat behind the drill of a parade honouring a strong and unpredictable Queen imprinting her mark into the ground to the beat of her own drum.” For the track’s visceral visual accompaniment videographer Julia Crescitelli sourced free stock footage from across the internet to mount “an exploration into the human emotion of disgust.” Juxtaposing innocuous and titillating imagery with grotesque footage of leeches, ticks, internal organs and mould, Crescitelli examines the proximity between desire and revulsion.
‘Flourish’ is taken from Various Artists – Tender Squads, Balance Club/Culture Festival’s compilation marking the 2020 web edition of the festival. For more information about the festival you can follow them on Instagram and visit their website.
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