C. Spencer Yeh
2021This Too Shall Pass Away
C. Spencer Yeh
Referencing gaming culture in form and content as both an aesthetic device and point of nostalgia, Yeh's video for the band Xiu Xiu's "This Too Shall Pass (For Freddy)" portrays young twentysomething life in the style of overhead "dungeon crawler" video games. The digital sprites flutter throughout each other's daily lives and dramas in a manner that evokes a cross between The Legend of Zelda and MTV's The Real World. At night the characters escape into digital dreams that eventually collide, via partying, into a surrealistic, psychedelic episode blurring the line between reality and oblivion.
This Too Shall Pass Away
Baby Birds
C. Spencer Yeh
Baby Birds provides an intimate look at Yeh's body and the physiological production of sound. Five views of the artist's throat appear on screen, the camera looking down each one in illuminated close-up. The mouths open and close, exposing quivering tongues and uvula, and produce a layered soundtrack of scratchy, wheezing, squeaking laments. Visceral and visually captivating, Baby Birds addresses the dilemma that auditory experiences are more abstract than visual ones, and thus more difficult to "articulate" and to share.
Baby Birds
Beauty Is A Bowtie
C. Spencer Yeh
Jason Lescalleet had asked me to work on a video for his SONGS ABOUT NOTHING record, to be a part of a larger series of videos to accompany each track on the album. I had originally submitted a version which wasn't quite what he was envisioning (his request was 'I know that you'll know what to do with the hints of pop and blue-eyed soul in this track'), so I dug into a collection of VHS stock footage samples I had sitting around. That vibe, along with some video I had gathered, was topped off with a discrete sample of a popular and known experimental filmwork as suggested by my then-studiomate, artist Justin Lieberman. Suddenly a new story was written that we were both happy with.
Beauty Is A Bowtie
Buck and Judy
C. Spencer Yeh
C. Spencer Yeh's music video for Deerhoof interprets the simple lyrics of the band's song to place its protagonists on a colorful, psychedelic odyssey through videogame-inspired visuals. Animated with sprites that evoke 8-bit graphics, Buck and Judy encounter sundry items like bananas and strawberries, which are often associated with bonus powers in games such as Pac Man. Epic battles on ground and in airship conclude with the heroes in dueling monster outfits. The effect is unbridled pop and digital nostalgia.
Buck and Judy