VKRS#1 spoils the music video lover

This has not escaped the notice of Video Killed the Radio Star, a new Brussels festival that celebrates the music video as central rather than peripheral. For three days, the festival is focusing on the “art” of the music video and the relationship between sound and images in a broader sense. There will be masterclasses, screenings, DJ sets, and a concert by We Stood Like Kings, who will perform a soundtrack to the film Koyaanisqatsi. And there is a competition for Belgian music video directors in which local artists like A$ian Rocky, Marine Dricot, Brice VDH, and Ahmed Ayed will compete for the best video or coup de cœur of the past year. Those who want to take up the challenge can participate in the category “Speed-clipping” and put together a music video in three days. “Music videos have become essential for artists; just look at the huge success of the videos by Roméo Elvis and Angèle,” says Fanny De Marco, who along with Maxime Pistorio is the driving force behind the festival. “We primarily want to put the filmmakers in the picture, and they don’t necessarily have to be big names. There are absolute gems among some of the smaller productions.”

The title of the festival of course refers to the first music video that was ever shown on the music channel MTV on 1 August 1981. It was a 1979 song by the British new-wave band The Buggles, who spent 50,000 pounds recording their video in only one day in London. Spoiler alert: radio stars did not die, but MTV did unleash a revolution in the industry. Music channels started popping up all over the place. Budgets skyrocketed and music videos became short films; artistic masterpieces that in the best cases were iconic. Our young eyes were not to be exposed to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, but there were other incredible music videos, like “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, in which Reagan grabs his Russian opponent Chernenko by the cojones, the weeping black Jesus in Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, the guitar splinters in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and Anthony Kiedis’s wild shaman dance in “Give It Away” by his Red Hot Chili Peppers. Music video directors like Spike Jonze, David Fincher, and Anton Corbijn eventually became celebrated filmmakers.

Since then, however, music channels have died, and the internet has devoured music videos. “YouTube is our TV,” says Antoine from Gogolplex, the wacky Brussels-based audio-visual collective that made noted music videos for the Brussels rap crew STIKSTOF and their colleagues Le 77 and Juicy. Does the medium have as much impact? Yes and no. “I don’t see that many exceptional videos,” says Joe Vanhoutteghem, one of the founders of the Brussels film company Czar. Just under ten years ago, Vanhoutteghem drew a lot of attention for his raw music videos for The Hickey Underworld. He recently impressed us with his insane videos for Zwangere Guy, the aforementioned “Gorik Pt. 1”, and “Wie is Guy?”, a surrealist trip across Brussels that he conceived with his colleague Koen Mortier under their totally twisted alias Lionel Goldstein. “I miss good ideas,” he says. “Is it due to the creativity of the artists or the interference of the label? My sense is that everybody just wants to be hip or copy one another. You have to do more than just illustrate the song.” He thinks that the best music videos were made fifteen or twenty years ago, when aspiring directors like Jonathan Glazer and Michel Gondry made their mark. “There is a reason that they became interesting filmmakers.”

Nevertheless, you could argue that the internet has led to a boost in creativity, and technological advances have ensured that music videos are now more democratic. In principle, the only things you need are a smartphone and a good idea. The Brussels-based musician and music video director Benoît Do Quang alias A$ian Rocky did not need 7 million dollars – the excessive amount that Michael and Janet Jackson spent on “Scream” – to make the music video for “Bruxelles arrive”, which put Roméo Elvis and after him the whole Brussels rap scene on the map. It was filmed and edited for 20 euro, and now has more than 17 million views. “That is typically Brussels: creating something beautiful on a shoestring budget.” The boys of Gogolplex agree: “Our clips don’t cost us a cent, just a lot of time.”

Thanks to our phones, videos are in everyone’s back pocket, but they are also a throwaway product in a culture that suffers from a short attention span. So you have to be noticed. “You are a grain of sand between millions of others,” says the Tunisian-Brussels theatermaker and music video director Ahmed Ayed, who was noted for his work for Ammar 808. It is easy to discover and approach somebody via social media, though. In theory, labels, producers, and all kinds of other awkward mediating figures are superfluous. For example, when she was just starting out, Angèle convinced the young Belgian photographer Charlotte Abramow to make her music videos after they had started following each other on Instagram.

“Videos have a bigger impact than they did in the past,” Do Quang believes. “We live in a visual culture, people want to see everything. A huge part of the success of rappers is due to the visual language that they use in their music videos. People want to reflect their charisma.” Antoine from Gogolplex concurs: “You can find videos on YouTube about absolutely everything. We don’t read any more, we just watch. That is our reality.”

Because you don’t necessarily need the 6 billion views that “Despacito” got on YouTube, you can experiment as much as you want: there are no rules. “We listen to what the artist says and then we do whatever we want,” says Antoine from Gogolplex, which has positioned itself against the mainstream with experimental, artistic, and utterly absurd videos. Belgians, and especially people from Brussels, can really indulge in their love of surrealism. In a playful and also feminist way in the videos by Charlotte Abramow, and in a violent way in those of Lionel Goldstein. “We don’t consciously look for that absurdity,” says Antoine. “ Look around, reality is full of absurdities.” Vanhoutteghem agrees: “Being the urban jungle that it is, Brussels is extremely interesting visually. I was recently filming in the Netherlands, and it was definitely less inspiring.”

So, what makes making music videos so interesting? “Their freedom,” Ahmed Ayed concludes. “You might be making a short film, something totally abstract, an animated film, you can tell a story or not, stick to the lyrics or do something completely different. It is an audio-visual poem.” “Something magical happens when you combine music and video. In the best cases, it transcends the sum of its parts,” agrees Do Quang. “I hope we can make this clear with this first edition,” Fanny De Marco says. “Hopefully many artists will meet each other here, and the festival will result in beautiful new music videos.”

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