18.02.2020 by Mathis Neuhaus

Premiere: Video for Magda Drozd’s “New Home”

Back in December, Magda Drozd debuted on zweikommasieben’s publisher Präsens Editionen with Songs for Plants. The album was praised as an often surreal but always immersive introduction to Drozd’ music and featured a sonic palette as eerie as fragile. These attributions would also make the cut when talking about the video for album-standout “New Home,” directed by by Venice-born and Zurich-based artist Nicola Genovese. Ahead of Drozd’s performance at Oto Nove Swiss Paris, we are excited to be premiering the video here.

Someone rolls down a hill, like we all used to do when we were younger;
the singer sings, peeking around a shower curtain;
the city seems to be burning and a person is put into the flames as a sacrifice;
different flames, in a different context, though;
the violin is played by the artist, whose face is manipulated by what seems to be an Instagram face-filter;
the ocean;
an organic-looking mixture, molded by hands;
the artist as a child, before starting school and riding a bicycle in front of a church.

This assemblage of scenes constitutes the video for “New Home,” which was realized by Nicola Genovese. The Zurich-based artist’s work often deals with questions of identity and perception of gender as well as the inherently intertwined power structures. For Magda Drozd’s video, Genovese translates (some of) these interests into poetic pictures that transcend a linear narrative and which refuse to give clear answers. We are not living in a time of simplicity anyways. Not least, Genovese’s approach is in line with how Drozd works: she examines a “non-rational perception of the world and speculative narratives,” as her CV states. To do so, Drozd creates installations, performances, or music. The latter came to fruition in its most cohesive form yet in December 2019, when she put out the album Songs for Plants through Präsens Editionen.

In the video for “New Home,” Drozd is clearly present. Established not only as a singer and instrumentalist, but also as an ambivalent persona, the artist lets us in on her youth, her home (?), and her talents. Through all this, she is keeping eye contact with the viewer, establishing a connection and subtly breaking down the fourth wall. These scenes are enriched with found footage, resulting in a collage that bends time and space. An associative approach that lets the viewer decide which routes she or he wants to follow and which connections to really make. Just like the poetic source material, the video to “New Home” makes it easy to get lost in its fragmented beauty.

Magda Drozd’s Songs for Plants came out on December 6, 2019 on Präsens Editonen, also home to zweikommasieben Magazine. Drozd will perform Oto Nove Swiss, a festival for contemporary music and sounds presented by Südpol Lucerne, Bad Bonn, and Präsens Editionen, this coming Friday.