Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Ohne of the popular videos of Visions of 2034, a new audio show from video producer Romain Gavras and musician Benoit Heitz (AKA Surkin), is a funny twist on the traditional plot. In God Hates Space, some young people have moved to a forest somewhere in Middle America because of their beliefs, especially the idea that the Earth is empty: absurd things in the years when twenty-twenties are becoming homeless, and celebrities say Kendrick Lamar. sending “Demons via TV” during its Super Bowl halftime show.
But here’s the twist: God Hates the Place, with its terrifying depictions of fascism and crackpot conspiracy, was made more than six years ago in Ukraine, before the war. Its aesthetic — which Surkin describes as a combination of “coherence” and “Monster’s strong drink” — is recognizable, not descriptive. “We shoot these videos and sometimes it takes a while to get them released,” says Surkin. The future is upon us.
God Hates Space features the vocals of singer-rapper 070 Shake, who also appears on Neo Surf, a song set on an impressive marble stage. Neo Surf’s vision of young people surfing in exciting, exotic places vibrates with their vision of the future, says Gavras. “If we talk about the future and make a robot, in five years that robot will be obsolete.
God Hates Earth is a great introduction to the world of Gener8ion, Gavras is Surkin’s long-term project, which explores absurd images of a potentially dark future. Gavras is recognized as one of the leading music video directors of his generation, having helmed the popular videos for Justice’s Stress, Jamie xx’s Gosh and MIA’s Born Free and Bad Girls (he also gained tabloid fame by being Dua Lipa’s boyfriend). Surkin has produced a number of cult-favorite and reformer hits, featuring mid-00s legends such as Boys Noize, DJ Mehdi and the Klaxons.
They’ve been friends “forever”, says Gavras, and Gener8ion has been whispering in the background. “Finding money to make videos that are ambitious is very difficult,” says Gavras. “Surkin would have music. We’d talk about pictures, then make money off of me doing prostitution and doing commercials.” Piece by piece, over the last eight years, we started to develop this idea of what the future holds.
Vision 2034 coincides with the release of Love & Tears, Gener8ion’s debut album. It also includes new movies – one starring Charlize Theron – as well as new adaptations of Gosh and Born Free. One of the show’s most impressive works is Storm, a music video starring Swedish singer Yung Lean, set in a Leeds boys’ school in 2034 where Lean plays a troubled boy soldier who oversees minor crimes. It went viral on social media earlier this year, in part Damien Jalet‘s incredible choreography of male dancers in school uniforms.
Gavras says “it’s fun to watch movies on the big screen”, like on Visions of 2034, but he doesn’t mind how the most impressive moments of Storm were downloaded and shared on social media. “We put up a long video where the punch comes in four minutes” – no spoilers – “and then the internet does its thing and edits it.”
The terrible video of MIA’s Born Free – which shows red people being removed from their homes and massacred, in Gavras and MIA’s comment on the videos about the massacre of Tamil people – is one of the previous works in the Vision of 2034, because Gavras feels that its themes are closely related to the themes of Gener8ion’s pets. “What was interesting about Born Free,” he says, “is that we were banned from YouTube for a fictional video, but it was the time when Saddam Hussein was hanged, and that was not banned from YouTube. It’s always interesting: a conversation between what’s shocking, what’s not.”
Of course, Gener8ion is still a magnet for controversy. Storm’s film was welcomed by the American right for its portrayal of a group of young, mostly white, men. In France, the right was mocked for shooting Lean drawing a penis on a map where France is located. “I’m often hated by both sides of the political spectrum, as well sometimes love, and this video got love from all ends, which is rare. But in France, they were saying, ‘Is this Swedish rapper painting a penis?’” Gavras laughs in amazement.
