After-note in filming “Atelier”, a music video by Kenji Kariu

After-note in filming “Atelier”, a music video by Kenji Kariu

The French novelist and filmmaker Georges Perec wrote in 1973, “The daily papers talk of everything except the daily.”

The idea behind making this music video started with my interests in observing the repetitiveness of everyday life, the relationship of things that happened in the world, and the banality of the ultra ordinary.

We live in an era where the information-overloaded, image-saturated network has a strong influence in the formation of aesthetic and cognitive categories of its perception, increasingly alienated us from what we actually try to pursue. It becomes more and more common to look at the screen for the whole day, browsing things here and there without being able to make connections between them. To be able to think freely without linking the current situation to us is getting more and more difficult.

The contemporary hierarchy is no longer based on exclusivity but on its homogenizing power. To be at the top of the hierarchy used to mean having limited access to specific places or information. Yet the new hierarchy means to get everyone to reach the same place, a sacred religion that influences the emergence of certain subjectivities that fetishizes precision and perfection.

To me, looking into the banal practices and repetitions of life helps to approach the secret thread that strings together the dream. It is the utterly ordinary that reveals the desire or fear that was once forgotten. It is the space where conjuncture of accidents, desires, and habits was bought into existence, a counter-current to the steadying directness towards a specific set of mindset.

The filmmaker & artist Chris Marker once said:

“I've been around the world several times, and now only banality still interests me.”

By looking at how the days follow one another and resemble one another, the acceleration of time and the stagnation, maybe we could find a new route through the contemplation of obsolescence and plainness.

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About the music video "Atelier"


A “jam-film style" music videos project for Japanese musician Kariu Kenji for his recent album “Sekai". This video is the 1st part of the music video collaboration projects between SUGOI's representative Youji Akiba and musician Kenji Kariu, in which each of us directs one music video that synchronizes with each other.

Directed and filmed by Kalun