An Artist’s Elegy for SHOWstudio

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Radical Self-reliance. The Effects of the Pandemic on the Creative Process.

The pandemic has gifted us with more time at home. We’ve had to rethink and reprioritize how we wanted to decorate it. Artists such as Gab Rhome, musician and producer, and Alex Black, photographer and filmmaker, who are used to living half their lives in airplanes for their work have had to find ways to stay creative while staying put. “Having our life’s work labeled as non-essential puts our entire existence as creatives into question. Yet, how could we survive a quarantine without escapism through music, movies and books?” explains Black.

During a second quarantine in Canada this fall, life partners Alex Black and Gab Rhome decided to collaborate on a fashion film that explores what it is to be an artist during a pandemic. “We had a need to stay creative and explore the
new emotions we had been confronted with” says Black. “The sacredness of the creative process came to the forefront. We found inspiration in collaboration and in our place of home. We were our own muses.”

The film explores the pressures artists put on themselves during their creative process and the anxieties around output levels. The Citizen Kane and Hitchcock type suspense warping the linear perception of time stresses the circus of routine and rituals. Our character, played by Gab Rhome, is an artist who has everything he needs to create; success, wealth and a beautiful home to inspire a creative routine. Yet he limits himself with his thoughts. “He projects himself into the inanimate objects” explains Rhome. “Everything that is looking at him is actually him looking at himself. He is confronted with his thoughts of inadequacy and is scared of looking at himself.“

The doubting of your skills, talents or accomplishments known as Imposter Syndrome resonates throughout the movie. “I think there is a lot of mystification around freelance creative roles” adds Alex Black. “You have to form a very strong voice to stand apart from the others but self-doubt can easily creep in if no one confirms your choices along the way. Your worst enemy can be your thoughts.”

We sense the repetition of the everyday as we see the character wearing the same Gucci AW20 outfit throughout the video. “We love Gucci. Not only the clothing, but their raison d’être. They celebrate individualism and the different voices of creatives” Rhome explains. The classic turtleneck and blazer combination is a stand in for a certain conformity so everyone can project their own feelings of inadequacy into him even if they aren’t from his world.

The shooting location perfectly ties with the styling by Gucci, a French country house meets Italian villa designed and decorated by Black’s mother. Having moved a lot throughout her life, this is the only home that has been a constant. The idea of staying home during quarantine went beyond the location, the project was entirely made by Black and Rhome, from directing to acting to editing to styling and makeup and, of course, the sound design. Rhome, a skilled producer and musician, scored the film after assembling a make-shift studio in the solarium we see in the movie. “I feel very fortunate to be able to move my studio into such an inspiring space. But I have to admit that it’s been challenging to stay fresh creatively in repetition” says Gab Rhome.

“Radical self-reliance became particularly important to me during the first full lockdown in March 2020” says Black. One of the 10 Burning Man Principles, Radical Self Reliance is about relying on your outer and inner resources. Essentially, it’s avoiding relying on others to solve your problems. “There’s a certain mental strength in digging yourself out of any problem, mental or physical. Our film’s character lets himself get defeated by his own negative thoughts. We wanted to express our inner strength in the making of this film. Although I’m never behind the camera when dealing with motion, I acted as my own DP for this film.” Used to working on big sets when directing, Alex Black shot the film on a vintage Super 8mm camera that belonged to her grandfather.