Pixel Pop
Raquel Meyers's vividly animated videos for chiptuners like Jellica, Bubblyfish, and Glomag mirror the music's retro-tech aesthetic with 8-bit visuals and narrative elements lifted from the era of 2-D videogames. While many will spy the influence of Paper Rad in the Madrid-based artist's work-- particularly the Rad's more ludic pieces like Robert Parish or their Cory Arcangel collabo Super Mario Movie -- one might easily argue for an even older lineage stretching back to Lillian Schwartz's Op-Art-inflected computer films of the early 1970s or the imaginary landscapes of Jane Veeder's seminal 1982 real-time graphics tape Montana. A connection to the latter can be especially espied in Meyers's The Emperor's New Snuff Box, a mostly black-and-white collage of mountain ranges, spinning cubes, strobing patterns and an unnervingly faceless galloping horsething, perfectly complementing the ominous, static-punctuated music. Other clips show off a more colorful playfulness, but always with notable bits of edge. A video to accompany Prince remake I WLD DI 4 U features pixelly kitties being adorably crushed to death and ascending to heaven; with videogame logic, each one of the cat's nine lives is ticked off in a top-left countdown. Follow the Red Dots places a Minnie Mousean character in a Super-Mario-like pellet-eating adventure, while FuriousClubfoot stars a crustacean-headed boogaloo dancer traipsing across a burning city. Meyer's latest video, for Los Punsete's 2 Policias involves a band of beer-drinking bunnies, public urination, and police brutality, all done in the Meyers's densely-layered cute-brut style. - Ed Halter
Image: Raquel Meyer, Follow the Red Dots
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