In March of 2022, an unexpected beautiful thing happened. Soilwork wrote me and said they'd be interested in working with me.
Soilwork had been working on a new Övergivenheten album for some time and had begun to select songs for music videos. I was offered the chance to animate a video for a masive song called Nosu Somme La Guerre and naturally I jumped at the opportunity.
Of course, working with such a big band is something beyond my natural environment, experience and abilities. I'm just one person whose all work rests on my own hands and amateur skills, which I practiced by tinkering with animation, which I learned about in the evenings between painting, photo shooting and playing Baldur's Gate.
I had to set up some terms, define a script, prepare crucial story lines, designe character in a complete script - no one could ever ask me to do that. I approached the substance responsibly and wanted to deal with the main problems of the assignment, with the moods and ideas that are contained in the tones and in the words.
The following ideas had to be captured in the authors' compositions....Armageddon ish feel due to the pandemic. Everyone tries to find a new way of existence in the pandemic and the things it will change.
...Lyrics has evolved from being more centered about personal experiences and views in the past to become more externalized and reflecting on the world around us.
Some lyrics takes inspirations from own experiences dealing with mental health issues and "middle age anxiety".…
I was given a lot of trust and freedom from the band, incredible field to work in a way that was meant to support their own work.
To these ideas I added my own inspirational threads, there were quite a few, I finished the whole structure by this keys.
Inspiration and applied ideas
Emptiness, loneliness
industrial empty spaces, claustrophobia, change of focus to emphasize the space in its confinement and emptiness
Isolation - repsirators, distance from other people, corridors, safety glasses, personal protective clothing and accessories
Contagion spreading in spite of measures - through the soul, through darkness, loneliness, depression, purposelessness
Backroom - inspiration from modern horror vacui - the emptiness of modern industrial architecture, anonymity, confinement in the midst of urban development, the periphery, the streets and the apartment, everything turns into a cage, an industrial cold space and a prison, a surreal experience of solitude.
Industrial space, concrete, cranes, glass, I drew my mood from the largest Central European transshipment yard for shipping containers in Prague - Uhříněves, where I used to go on night hikes and take notes, sketch, watch cranes in motion, fascinated by the scenes.
Colours and lights - complementary colours of lights - turquoise green for the environment, yellow-orange for life, disease and nature - contrast separates life from death, heat from cold. Nighttime artificial lighting with yellow bulbs and cool discharge lamps and fluorescent tubes. I originally had light sources incorporated in all the scenes, but gradually eliminated them and left just the light alone, as the light sources disturbed the compositional void and I found they weren't necessary. It's not like you can't light a scene without a fluorescent, in animation I can afford to light individual spots and leave the sources unseen. Act of creation - decision and purpose.
Reflections and eyes - the first part of scenes will often be reflected in the hero's glasses - a reflection of emptiness that is experienced twice, later scenes will be reflected directly in the eyes of "hero", in light and expression (link to 2001: Space Odyssey).
The "hero" is enclosed in a protective suit, wearing a respirator, goggles and headphones - all his senses are isolated, muffled, distorted. He tries to protect himself from others and the environment itself, but this protection mainly isolates him from life itself, leading him into the darkness of his soul, into solitude.
Very soon he will see himself, infected, dead, without movement, without passion, without life. This sight and experience will move him closer to death, but also to creation, because he will understand that time is running out. The hero has visions - in his isolation he sees strange things - detachment, the nearness of death and cold, the threat of sickness and suffering - he sees tumors of sickness, demons, scenes beyond reality (coming more and more often after the chorus), he is changing himself. The scene of assembling the sculpture is a parody of the laborious work in factories, which here turns into the process of creating a colossus that goes beyond the understanding of the individual.
The hero walks through empty corridors, meeting silhouettes of other people who keep their distance, wearing veils, holding onto the glass, not moving, like empty figures. Every man for himself.Despite his body's protective shell and gadgets, his soul becomes infected - he finds a glowing spot through the glove on his own hand - he removes the glove, stares in amazement at his own mortality and advancing doom - he is horrified even though he is no longer actually alive, trapped in a place where nothing makes him happy and he has no further prospects because of the darkness and grimness within him.
The hero is first totally equipped and his senses are filtered. By the end, he is essentially naked, he can see clearly, hear clearly, feel touch and pain and cold.
During the chorus, he wakes up, screams, rips his protective suit, throws off his glasses and headphones and respirator - the infection of his soul rages through his body, which mutates, grows ulcers, tumours or fungi, burns and glows inappropriately in the empty and cold space of his prison of body. He is freed - he sprouts like life itself, growing and breaking down barriers. He is looking for a way to survive - assembling the statue, a colossus, a monument to preserve his life energy and spirit.
A vision of a colossus is projected into the hero's path - a dismantled statue, which is transported in pieces by cranes. An arm, a head, a leg, a torso, a dead giant in which a spark still glows deep inside, it springs from holes and wounds - the transported head leaves a trail behind, it infects the poor workers with some kind of life,"hero" awakes, "life" grows through the environment, orange prevails, it pulsates, the colossus rises from the dust - it looks like our hero - it is a work that mirrors the creator and that outgrows him. It is music, it is creation, it is human labour and the creative spirit that rises from the broken fragments and outgrows all the emptiness and coldness of a bygone era, it is the trace of a work that emerges from the dark days and nights as a force of inspiration, as something that endures. Like a song, like music, like a painting. It outgrows worry and death. It is immortality. The sculpture is also a twisted image of the author. It is a work that marks his features, abilities and world view. It cannot be objectively cleansed of its own body and spirit, it marks all creation, it forms and destroys, it twists like roots that the stones in the soil do not allow to grow straight.
Work is the key - not just any work, but work that is important for a person. Work that is creative, inspiring, searching and questioning. The whole animation is built on this idea.
A sick, insecure, lonely man, looking for a cure for his loneliness, mortality, illness.
From a strange industrial space full of cranes, glass and concrete, he reassembles a monumental sculpture. He reunites parts of it that have always existed. He breathes life into it, if only for a moment.
It's not easy to revive a colossus. Disease turns to energy, fire is the blood and power of all creation, even if it leads to its destruction. The statue, the work, must perish. It must crumble, sometimes after years of work, sometimes after seconds or throughout the centuries. But it will happen, it doesn't matter if it lives for a second or a thousand years.
Time is relative. But the revival of the work itself, the process, the journey is essential, as is the pain and the artist's own mistakes and mortality. Every song will fade, every painting will crumble, every temple will collapse. But its creation is a divine act. A time when even a sick and weak man can be for a moment a god, a demiurges, a creator himself, injecting into the world some energy that transcends his mundane existence.
This is the moment when depression and destruction turn into healing and redemption. this is the time when blood has its price and every act becomes unique and unrepeatable.
