A good way to describe Chris Cunninghan would be to
say that he is the visual alter-ego of wacky
experimental electronic artist Aphex Twin.
Cunninghan's universe is populated with freaks,
androgynous creatures and human-like machines, which
combined with desaturated tones and epileptic
editing, contribute to create a distorted and menacing
world that perfectly embodies the vision of the
musicians he is associated with.
While his imagery is usually cold and industrial, it
varies from the creepy—seeing Aphex Twin as a kid in
"Come to Daddy" or as a pimp & woman in "Windowlicker"
is equally traumatic—to the robotic—Autechre's
"Second Bad Vibel" & Bjorn's "All is full of Love "—,
the melancholy—Portishead's "Only You". There are occasional references to movies—Leftfield's "Afrika
Shox" and Square Pusher's "Come on my Selector" that
play like a homage to Asian horror cinema in the
tradition of Hideo Nakata. However, sometimes Cunninghan can
create moments of rare beauty as his video of
Madonna's "Frozen" can attest.
If you haven't had enough of his twisted
collaborations, in the extras there is also an
amusing video installation of a robot-monkey playing
drums—on an Aphex Twin's soundtrack—as well as the
making of Björk's video with an enigmatic
interview of the Icelandic diva. However, my favorite extra is
"Flex", a video installation featuring the
naked bodies of two lovers in a modern under water
dance.
Cunninghan's videos, the nightmarish
incarnations of the darkest electronic music, are
singular enough to have a life of their own.
The Work of Director Chris Cunninghan review
