Atomic

Atomic is a shot-for-shot remake of the 1980 music promo video for the pop song 'Atomic' by Blondie. Recreated with a Debbie Harry look-a-like, the video replicates the imagined post-apocalyptic setting of the original video with the kitsch, vamp costumes and lo-fi, homemade stage set. The video starts with a solarised sequence of a helmeted man approaching the gig venue on a horse, riding through a desolate yard of outbuildings. The use of this popular early video effect of solarisation with the images of a horse recalls Malcolm Le Grice's seminal avant-garde film of 1970, Berlin Horse. In 1980 what was the lasting effect of the underground film avant-garde in the new epoch of video? A transposed framing device, in electronic technology, the prologue to a music video?
Examining early cinema and early video, the soundtrack of the original song, 'Atomic' is replaced with a contemporary score for FW Murnau's silent vampire film 'Nosferatu' 1922. A silent-film-like punk rock performance becomes a screaming nightmare, where mouths emit only orchestral shrills and crashes. Atomic questions the copyright of an original song. The video is reconstructed painstakingly, but we don't hear the same music nor see the same people. Are the now imitated performers in the original 'Atomic' video, dramatising the last memories of life on earth, post apocalypse? When did art reach this point?