Liam Finn: Second Chance Dirrected by Angus Sutherland

Alright, this is totally late but here it is.

For my contribution to the Archive discussion I decided to call upon a art form that I believe has been marginalized by it's own popularity: the Music Video.

Liam Finn's "Second Chance," hits me as the theme song for our entire conversation over the definition of "the Archive." The song starts off as though it were being wound up with some kind of krank, and has to catch up to the it's own rhythm. What follows is a melancholy melody about a woman haunted by her past and a man who no longer recognizes her. Finn described this as a song about breaking up with a girl that couldn't move on from the relationship. I think the lyrics are infused with the themes of time, memory and the human condition, which seem also to be the core themes in dealing with the archive. Sutherland's dirrection of the video summons a highly archival aestetic as well. The aged look of the film gives us the feeling of looking into Finn's past. The technique of putting two shots on screen at the same time shows us contrasting renditions of the same event, highlighting the faultiness of human memory. Throughout the video, we see snapshots of locations, many including stone structures and buildings, and long stretches of time sped up to seconds. These images ellicit a dualistic sense of the lasting versus the inpermanent. Likewise, the stopmotion animation of Finn's movemen give us a sense of recall decay as time passes us by. All of this esspecially makes the video a wonderful expression of the archive and human memory.

I can't figure out how to get the video on the blog, so here's a link:

Second Chance

Enjoy!