TY - JOUR
T1 - Come to Daddy? Claiming Chris Cunningham for British Art Cinema
AU - Leggott, James
PY - 2016/4
Y1 - 2016/4
N2 - Twenty years after he came to prominence via a series of provocative, ground-breaking music videos, Chris Cunningham remains a troubling, elusive figure within British visual culture. His output – which includes short films, advertisements, art gallery commissions, installations, music production and a touring multi-screen live performance – is relatively slim, and his seemingly slow work rate (and tendency to leave projects uncompleted or unreleased) has been a frustration for fans and commentators, particularly those who hoped he would channel his interests and talents into a full-length ‘feature’ film project. There has been a diverse critical response to his musical sensitivity, his associations with UK electronica culture – and the Warp label in particular – his working relationship with Aphex Twin, his importance within the history of the pop video and his deployment of transgressive, suggestive imagery involving mutated, traumatised or robotic bodies. However, this article makes a claim for placing Cunningham within discourses of British art cinema. It proposes that the many contradictions that define and animate Cunningham's work – narrative versus abstraction, political engagement versus surrealism, sincerity versus provocation, commerce versus experimentation, art versus craft, a ‘British’ sensibility versus a transnational one – are also those that typify a particular terrain of British film culture that falls awkwardly between populism and experimentalism.
AB - Twenty years after he came to prominence via a series of provocative, ground-breaking music videos, Chris Cunningham remains a troubling, elusive figure within British visual culture. His output – which includes short films, advertisements, art gallery commissions, installations, music production and a touring multi-screen live performance – is relatively slim, and his seemingly slow work rate (and tendency to leave projects uncompleted or unreleased) has been a frustration for fans and commentators, particularly those who hoped he would channel his interests and talents into a full-length ‘feature’ film project. There has been a diverse critical response to his musical sensitivity, his associations with UK electronica culture – and the Warp label in particular – his working relationship with Aphex Twin, his importance within the history of the pop video and his deployment of transgressive, suggestive imagery involving mutated, traumatised or robotic bodies. However, this article makes a claim for placing Cunningham within discourses of British art cinema. It proposes that the many contradictions that define and animate Cunningham's work – narrative versus abstraction, political engagement versus surrealism, sincerity versus provocation, commerce versus experimentation, art versus craft, a ‘British’ sensibility versus a transnational one – are also those that typify a particular terrain of British film culture that falls awkwardly between populism and experimentalism.
KW - Chris Cunningham
KW - cinematic bodies
KW - film and music
KW - music video
U2 - 10.3366/jbctv.2016.0311
DO - 10.3366/jbctv.2016.0311
M3 - Article
VL - 13
SP - 243
EP - 261
JO - Journal of British Cinema and Television
JF - Journal of British Cinema and Television
SN - 1743-4521
IS - 2
ER -