The Artist Explains: Teevee Nicks - 'Dove'
LA based filmmaker/artist Teevee Nicks (Jacki Huntington) speaks to us about the creative ideas behind her surreal single and music video, ‘Dove’, which is about the power of self-determination in the face of toxic lovers.
How did you come up with the ideas for the video?
As a filmmaker who is also a musician (or a musician who’s also a filmmaker??), I can’t help but think visually. When I’m writing and producing a song, I tend to live in it. It tells me things, or it makes me feel intense feelings. This video is my attempt to translate all of that visually. It’s difficult to make anything feel new or fresh, because so much has already been done and said creatively. I looked for ways to make this video more tactile and surprising, with the water-like effects, the subliminal messaging, the intense colours, and the weird tongue movements. I wanted it to feel human and alive and a little bit like being on drugs.
Could you tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
’Dove’ was written as a letter to a lover who rejected me, because I didn’t fit the story of who he thought he wanted at the time. What I wrote is a kind of defence of myself. I’m gassing myself up. I’m righteously owning my wrongness and the pain and the joy that has made me who I am. It’s a song about self-determination in the face of doubt. So I wanted to convey that grace and power, but in a slightly messy, human way.
When I was working on this song, I was really obsessed with yoga. I was training as an instructor at a hot yoga studio in Los Angeles, and everything was asanas to me. I decided to combine those graceful but mechanical movements with Gaga, a movement language that’s known for being fluid, wild, and improvisational. My friend Miguel Angel Guzman, the dancer who appears in the video, is a Gaga dancer and also just the most beautiful man that I know––inside and out. I worked with him and choreographer Georgia Usborne to blend yoga into Gaga. To me, that’s the main idea: exploring the edge between yogi control and Gaga abandon.
While I was recording the Teevee Nicks Light Blue EP, I was overjoyed to be making music again, and I was excited to share it with people, but I also was very afraid of making it about marketing my body and my face. So instead of putting myself in the video, I asked Miguel to be in it. I like the sassy reversal of female artists using men to sell their work in the way that men have been doing to women for ages.
How does the video connect with the song?
The refrain in the song – “fate, freedom, power, desire” – riffs off of the core themes legendary literary critic Harold Bloom identified in Wallace Stevens’ poetry. To put it briefly, it’s a mantra that’s like a map to God and a way to love yourself, despite all odds. The video is an exploration of that personal mission to keep going authentically.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories you can share with us?
We shot this on the Bowery in New York City, in a studio and on the street. I used to live there, and I’m very nostalgic about my solo late night walks down the Bowery, with the lighting stores glowing and shining like little window museums. It’s just a kind of cheap city living magic that makes the trash, the rats, and the incessant noise a little worth it.
Anyway, it was bitterly cold outside the day we shot this. I was directing and shooting the video, and so in order to get those sidewalk dancing shots, I had to operate the camera while walking backwards. Two of my crew held on to my shoulders and cleared the way of passersby as Suzi Sadler, who was gaffer and assistant camera on this project, was glued to my side, holding a light to shine on Miguel as he danced. We were a goofy, cozy bundle of four people shuffling backwards down the sidewalk. Later that evening, my art director Anna Lian Tes was scouring the sidewalks in Lower Manhattan for the exact right kind of coffee cup and cigarette butts to arrange in the final shots of the video. Kind of awkward and gross, but that’s movie magic, folks! New Yorkers are so used to seeing these kinds of cinematic antics in public, so it isn’t a big deal.
Logistically, this video was borne out of an opportunity to build a production around NanLite PavoTubes, which are the reason why the video is totally saturated in color. I’m super grateful to have been hired as a director to dream up this music video to show off the capabilities of the lights. I love making music videos, but they are almost always a no-budget labor of love, so it meant a lot to be paid and pay talented friends to work on this with me.
Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
The first verse marvels at “how many conflicting things can be true at once.” It’s the fight to find peace in all that tension. I like to view it as starting from a place of confinement and rigidity, with all the yoga moves, and experiencing a cathartic release on the street amid the noise and the light. Kind of a parable of life in New York City, too!
Interview by Karla Harris