What a blast, a filmmaker who’s liveperformance is sold out. Chris Cunningham, known from videoclips for Aphex Twin (Windowlicker, Come to Daddy), Bjork (All is full of love) and Squarepusher (Come on my selector) premiered with a live-show in Paris this year and presented his second performance at 5DaysOff.

After a short technical interruption Rubber Johnny was the first guest of the evening in Amsterdam; he stared with his lit eyes into the excited crowd and with his arms flying all over the centerscreen, he tried to grab the attention of the audience. A metronome was taking our heartbeats to a higher level at the other two (smaller) sidescreens, all guided by remixed music of Aphex Twin.

Cunningham got our attention, and with a naked fighting man and woman he tried to keep it, but definitely lost it. The volume of the music was way to low, and the sequence took too long. He didn’t really use the three screens or the laser which did work during Rubber Johnny. The rest of his performance he used his old material, like Windowlicker, the ad for Playstation and Sheena is a Parasite (video he made for The Horrors), but none of it represented a really new vision. Low point was a fight sequence from Star Wars. I guess there were more technicals errors than possible, because the result of the evening was quite disappointing.

He’s definitely got it though, and in a year or three, he will probably present a mindblowing liveperformance. New material and the use of the screens/laser which are set up would be a condition, that’s for sure.

5 days off
Saturday 18th of July, 2009, Melkweg Rabozaal Amsterdam

DH