When one combines ‘the ninth art’ (comics) and popular music such as electro pop and inevitable dubstep, in front of you there is whole new music story that takes you to London in the (era of ) 60’s (years of the 20th century). If we want to simplify things we can say that we are talking about a music video – a product that goes by name “Bad kingdom”. There is a whole group of people standing behind of this music piece of art – first of all, music band “Moderat”, or should we say a collaboration between two German musicians Moderaktor (Gernot Bronster, Sebastian Szary) and talented artist Sascha Ring also known as Apparat and creative team of conceptual artist (graphic designers) – Pfadfinderei [ fɑ:d’fɪndɜ:raɪ ] with whom they have achieved quite a sucess on the realisation of the video to the song „Rusty nails“ in 2009.
„Bad kingdom“ is a story about a young man who wants to escape from the injustice and military system he was born into. He turns towards arts – literature, esthetics and dandyism – the way of living during the 60’s that became popular through the pop culture (David Bowie, Andy Warhol). In spite of all these things he realizes that he is at the beginning of the story and that the mechanism he once wanted to escape from has won. That’s why the chorus “This is not what you wanted, not what you had in mind” is so catchy.
Behind the main story of the “Bad kingdom” there is a ‘perfect match’ – greed and ambition, things that a mortal can’t easily avoid. They always want more and as a powerful machine they rule the world that looks the same now as it was before. The key message of this story is recognition of the problem – system that absorbs everything and everyone and inability to change the things.
In the video that seems to be full of symbols there are pictures and motives that pass by showing a decadence of the white man and the whole society where status matters more than a person itself. That’s why we can see squared coin, an ‘emblem’ that (according to creative team) should be simple, little frightening and related to human manner. The circles of joined hands originate from the séances, which people are ever more prone to.
When it comes to music, beside perfectly mixed rhythms of dubstep and interesting Moderat’s vocals we have chance to notice a sound of an elephant’s trunk whose role is to associates us metaphorically of humanity as a wilderness or should we use that often used phrase – It’s jungle over there, reminding us how society is greedy and dangerous and how at the end we are on our own…
On the question – how they’ve decided to use only whites and blues lines, creative group of the sketch artists (Pfadfinderei) answered: „Because the main character is a blue-blooded villain”.
For P.U.L.S.E World : Jelena Radaković
Director / Producer: Pfadfinderei
Illustrators:
Bernado Maldonado Morales
Daavid Mörtl
Benedikt Rugar
Arne Jysch
Moritz Friedrich