‘What Should I Say’ from The 1975’s new album, ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’. Out now - the1975.lnk.to/noacf

The 1975 and Ben Ditto have curated an online exhibition of 15 artists responding to tracks from ‘NOACF’.
09 Sondra Perry responds to ‘What Should I Say’

For ‘What Should I Say’, Sondra Perry has constructed a Black 3D avatar and a blue-screen space in which to fracture his identity into pieces. The avatar is replicated eight times, and each of those eight puppets are made to perform different actions alongside one another: he jogs, he struts, he sashays, he ambles, he tiptoes, he retches with disgust. He runs a whole gamut of emotions for the duration of the song, and many different sides of him are presented to the world simultaneously. Characters, Perry shows us, are contradictory and complex.
Her piece explores how we all perform different roles, how easily identities can be appropriated – particularly in today’s lawless digital spaces – and how one person’s image can be cast into other people’s narratives whether they like it or not. It asks questions expanding on the song’s lyrical themes of transformation, redemption, and the feeling of being obliged to explain oneself:
“They’re calling out your name
Must have been something you
Changed
They’re calling out your name
What should I say?”
In this film, as in previous films, Perry uses Rosco Chroma Key Blue as a background and an environment; an empty stage of possibility on which anything can take place and anything can be said. She has described the deep Chroma Key Blue void as a place in which time flows in every direction and a story can go down many separate paths:
“The space of post-production being the space where the thing either has yet to happen, or it has, and everything has happened. … It’s like we have the obligation to create the images ourselves, so what are you going to do with that opportunity or responsibility and that space of the ‘post’?”
We can all ask ourselves this, every time we make an image. What should we do? How should we act? What do we want to change? What should we say?

sondraperry.com/

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