Mark Leckey

LondonAtella, 2002

Scenes from disaster movies, we witness people getting run over, a burning bus, outbreaks of fires and riots, the camera pans over streets of bombed houses to reveal visions and nightmares of destruction, which culminate in the explosion of Big Ben. Images of pointless violence, fantasies of chaos and downfall typically symbolize the deep fears that living in today’s megacities triggers in us. Yet despite its high neo-aesthetic and artistic sophistication LondonAtella has a nostalgic air about it, the film dotes on a kind of retro look that continues on as the protagonist and his partner, who joins the set in the last third of the clip, pose as dandies. Found footage is running in the background. The main character is acting in front of it. Using one of the simplest illusions in filmmaking, she leaps across the rooftops of buildings featuring in historical London footage. The soundtrack to these images comes from the album Radiohead and 20 cover versions of classics, the result of the musical collaboration by Mark Leckey (b. 1964) and singer Ed Liq under the band name donAtella. Like countless other music clips the video explores the crossing of boundaries in visual media that eschew unambiguous classification in the classic fields of visual fine art.

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