Holly Childs, Gediminas Žygus and Metahaven exchange whispers in ‘Formless’

Watch the third and final lyric video taken from their collaborative album, Hydrangea.

With the lyric videos for ‘Hydrangea’s Just The Password Though, Right?’ and ‘A Circle, A Spiral’, artist and writer Holly Childs, sound artist Gediminas Žygus and artists and filmmakers Metahaven explored the notion of “designer realities” and the cryptic political strategies used to create them.

On Holly and Gediminas’ collaborative album, Hydrangea, they trace narratives used to confuse, divide and control, following characters operating within these labyrinthine spaces. Using the voices of collaborators Elif Özbay, Marijn Degenaar and Mark Prendergast, they narrate these perspectives of instability, lost in the blurred line between fiction and reality. Borne out of a series of immersive performances, the artists describe Hydrangea as “a picture of our personal experience” and “a recreation of our experience of the instability of narratives and slipping in-between different frameworks, holding various roles at once.”

“The Hydrangea work is located in this instability of narrative over reality and exploring that experience on a personal level, like checking in with a loved one about some crazy shit you’ve just been exposed to that has shifted your understanding of reality”, Childs and Žygus told AQNB.

Eerie spoken word is set against a delicate sonic backdrop that draws influence from Disney string sections, Ravel’s impressionistic piano playing and, at times, both artists’ complex relationship to rave culture. This is where we find Childs & Žygus in ‘Formless’, which sees Degenaar and Prendergast conversing using phrases formally inspired by the post-structuralist writings of Hélène Cixous.

“From our point of view, ‘Formless’ is like being at a rave and/or being in bed with someone and whispering together under the bed covers,” explain Childs & Žygus,”like a night that is a non-linear experience of getting to know someone you already love though you’ve never met before.”

“Musically it is playing with the idea of capturing peak moments and dragging them into an infinity loop or vortex. Finding a particular moment in a track or in life, and wanting to replay it to total exhaustion.”

‘Formless’ is taken from Hydrangea, which is out now on Subtext Recordings.

For more information about Holly Childs, Gediminas Žygus and Metahaven, you can follow them all on Instagram.