Charlize Theron in tears. 'Hollow earther' incels who steal a spaceship. ICE-style stormtroopers rounding up redheads for 'containment' in the desert. Blazer-clad schoolboys, gathered for an end-of-term, end-of-days class photo, thrashing and headbanging to 'a drunk hooligan singing an ABBA song' in a feat of regimented but feral choreo, stoned on melted down 6G, the fastest tech and highest high available here in the near future.
These are what Gener8ion – filmmaker Romain Gavras, musician Surkin – call their Visions of 2034. The French artists’ new exhibition at London’s 180 Studios gathers together films made as commissioned music videos (for MIA’s 2010 track ‘Born Free’, which imagines an anti-ginger junta); as unwitting but uncannily predictive visions of the possibilities of AI (the many emotions of Oscar-winner Theron, played out on giant screens, filmed in 2018 but only revealed now); and as collaborative, album-promoting singles, most notably ‘Storm’. Touted as the lead track from Gener8ion’s debut album Love & Tears, which is released the same day as the exhibition opens, the viral video has had over 14 million views on YouTube alone since its release at the end of April.
Explaining 'the overall project' for the first time since ‘Storm’ exploded across feeds and screens in spring, Gavras says that the unifying idea across Gener8ion’s work emerged when 'we started thinking about what the near future looks like. Not in the AI/robot way, but the transversal, sideways things. What are the kids going to be doing? What drugs are they going to take in 10 years?'
He cites one piece, ‘God Hates Space’, the album-opener that’s also pegged as a single and also has an accompanying film. 'It’s about not flat earthers but hollow earthers, and it's their propaganda video. Our thinking is: what is a stupid idea now, and how dumber is it going to be in 10 years’ time?'
Hence, then, the unhinged, 60-odd schoolboys who appear in ‘Storm’. The seven-minute epic – filmed in Belgium with head-spinning choreography from French-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet – is the promo for two conjoined electronic tracks on the album, 'Storm I' and 'Storm II'. They feature Swedish rapper Yung Lean as both vocalist and antagonist. In the video, the 29-year-old, born Jonatan Håstad, is the convincingly teenage bully-in-chief in what’s billed as 'Storm Class of 2034', a school set in (vérifier ses notes) Leeds.
Hence, the first question that had to be asked upon meeting the Paris-based Gavras, 44, and Surkin (born Benoît Heitz), 40, in the bowels of 180 The Strand as they put the finishing touches to the installation of their video exhibition.
Wallpaper*: Pourquoi Leeds?
Romain Gavras: We wanted to set 'Storm' in the UK. In the psyche of people, in the common consciousness, the boys' school is British. [Beyond that] it's as dumb as this: as two French people, we wanted a short name! And to make it specific about a city. Not too posh, not too [overly familiar]. But short. So, Leeds. There you go!
W*: How hard was it to line up the choreography, with so many boys, so many moving parts, and with so many elements to the music?
RG: Damien and I worked before, a few months earlier, on an Yves Saint Laurent commercial [for MYSLF Eau De Toilette Intense, starring Austin Butler]… It took us a long time to cast, because I wanted young kids where you don't feel like they're dancers. So that when the choreo arrives, you're surprised.
So Damien did a lot of auditions. Then he built the choreography, first with four of them, then with five, and so on. So it's a mix between extreme preparation, almost military, and then four days shooting total.
W*: In terms of the song and the film, what was the first step?
Surkin: It was a back and forth between music and video from the start. I started a demo of a song that was very anthemic. What could be called almost stadium music. And we thought: who could we invite on this who could interpret it in a way where it’s something different? And we were talking with Yung Lean – Romain has known him for a long time…
W*: He’s also in your next film, Sacrifice, alongside Anya Taylor Joy and Charli xcx, right?
RG: Yeah. We’re gonna release it around September, October. We got along really well. He was the first one that was cast when I was writing Sacrifice. Before Anya, before everyone. And he was great in it – he'd never acted. Then when we were making the song, it made sense for him to be the face on that.
S: We brought him to the studio and said to him what we were thinking: a drunk hooligan singing an ABBA song. He got really into the idea. We had all these references for the video, different ideas going back and forth. Then we recorded the song first in Paris, then in Sweden, and then we finished it on the set of the video in Belgium.
RG: I've been doing [commissioned] music videos since I was 15. I'm 44 now. So I've lived through decades of music videos. And at some point with Ben, I was like: OK, it's way more fun to be in the heart of it. So we're gonna take Jonatan, and he's gonna sing a drunken ABBA song. Same with 070 Shake on [2021 Gener8tion single and film] ‘Neo Surf’: she's gonna sing a surf trap song.
It becomes more interesting and playful. Because a music video is not somewhere where you make money. I whore myself out to do commercials on the side to bring the money back to make a music video. Because there's no viable economy for music videos.
So it's something we're doing to have fun – and to explore ideas and bring in different people that we like. And explore stuff they wouldn't do normally. Yung Lean would not do an ABBA[-like] song normally.
The ‘Neo Surf’ video was billed as the rebirth of Gener8tion after a debut EP released in 2016. You said then it was about 'a disillusioned and damaged world, with puzzling poetry embodied by idle youth and underlying violence'. That was five years ago. How much more damaged and how much more disillusioned are we now?
RG: Ha! This is the interesting thing with some of the videos we've made five years ago – it still resonates now. If we went into robots and AI, stuff that is very zeitgeist-y, time catches up. But when it's ideas and bigger concepts like repression, youth... The varnish changes, but those things stay the same. And they get worse and dumber by the year.
So the delusion is there. We all know we're dancing on the edge of the volcano, and the end of the world is very close. But the thing is: even when it's gonna be the end of the world, kids are gonna be kids doing kids' things. Taking drugs like kids, dancing, doing stupid shit like kids. Some things will stay the same.
W*: And if people think they’ve seen all of ‘Storm’, they haven’t. Because the exhibition also features a different version of the video, right?
RG: Yes. We didn't put that on the internet because we want people to have a novelty when you come and see it. Basically every time we shoot, I shoot a version for internet and with an idea for the physical spaces. So you have those two formats. Not only can you see it big and not on your phone, but you also have a what-the-fuck moment with something you haven't seen.
W*: The Charlize Theron installation – with music by Foals’ Yannis Philippakis, which is the title track of the album – also ticks the what-the-fuck box. What was the origin of that idea?
RG: I shot it a while back. The idea was, it's like an engine to scan Hollywood actors, to recreate their emotion. So it's a demo version of [new tech]. But we shot it before AI, around 2018. It's an interesting dialogue to have actual Charlize Theron. Because now, her going for all those emotions, that can be done with AI. Whereas the conversation with ‘Storm’ was “AI could never do this”. Then we put out something where the question is: is it Charlize Theron? Or is it AI?
S: Just to be clear: it is Charlize Theron.
This idea that Gener8ion lives in 2034: how pessimistic is your outlook? And how optimistic?
S: It's mix of both, basically. For instance, the ‘Neo Surf’ video was about how kids are still kids, [even] in a pre-apocalyptic future.
RG: Even if the world turns to shit, there's still gonna be beauty. There's still gonna be kids doing stupid shit. The thing that is complex is that sometimes there's beauty in violence. Ben and I are both romantic, whether it's in the music or images. And romanticism is not just optimism or pessimism. It's both intertwined. It's the beauty of the world ending.
W*: And that stupid shit is kids forever chasing a new high. Like melting down 6G chips and inhaling them like crack.
S: That’s also poking fun of at the conspiracy theories around 5G, people being like: ‘They're controlling our minds with 5G.’ We like to play with those.
RG: What's interesting is that I showed it to my dad [esteemed Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras], and he was like: ‘Is this what kids do now?’ Maybe it will be!”
GENER8ION: VISIONS OF 2034, 180 Studios, 180 The Strand, London WC2. 12 June–31 July. Opening times: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 noon–7pm. Tickets: £15.00.