The Artist Explains: Claudio Donzelli - 'Ossessione'
We talk to Italian composer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Claudio Donzelli about his gripping, cinematic music video for stirring neo-classical composition, ‘Ossessione’.
Where was the video for 'Ossessione' filmed?
‘Ossessione’ was filmed around Almeria in Andalucia, Spain. For the video we needed a place with access to both the sea and the desert and the first option was Morocco because the director had recently been shooting there and knew his way around. Eventually Morocco turned out to be logistically too complicated so we thought of Andalucia, which has a landscape very similar to Morocco with the advantage of being within EU borders, which simplifies the logistics considerably. The video starts on a beach west of Almeria and ends in the desert of Tabernas, that is famous for the shooting of many Western movies in the 60s.
How does the video connect with the song?
The track is a musical representation of the dopamine seeking-reward loop that is at the base of addictive behaviours in the attention economy. In the video we wanted to follow the same paradigm and trace the same portrait with the cinematographic and choreographic language. So music and video are connected in the sense that they both provide a symbolic representation of the same psychological phenomenon.
Where was the video for 'Ossessione' filmed?
‘Ossessione’ was filmed around Almeria in Andalucia, Spain. For the video we needed a place with access to both the sea and the desert and the first option was Morocco because the director had recently been shooting there and knew his way around. Eventually Morocco turned out to be logistically too complicated so we thought of Andalucia, which has a landscape very similar to Morocco with the advantage of being within EU borders, which simplifies the logistics considerably. The video starts on a beach west of Almeria and ends in the desert of Tabernas, that is famous for the shooting of many Western movies in the 60s.
How does the video connect with the song?
The track is a musical representation of the dopamine seeking-reward loop that is at the base of addictive behaviours in the attention economy. In the video we wanted to follow the same paradigm and trace the same portrait with the cinematographic and choreographic language. So music and video are connected in the sense that they both provide a symbolic representation of the same psychological phenomenon. Do you have any behind the scenes stories you could share with us? I was supposed to join the shooting of “Ossessione” but unfortunately didn’t make it in the end so I had to ask the director about this one. So the story goes that on the first day of shooting, as they were working on a scene in the desert at sunset, it was getting darker and darker and at some point it became so dark that they could not see anything at all! They had to walk back to their cars in the pitch-black dark, using a couple of iPhone lights. Everything was fine in the end and that ended up being a bonding experience for the group that set a friendly vibe for the rest of the shooting.
Can you tell us about the ideas/themes/imagery used?
In the video we see two characters who are struggling and desperately trying to connect with each other. Their attempt is however in vain because they can’t reach beyond the screen that separates them. One of them embarks on a long and difficult journey to reach his partner and in the end we see the two characters rejoining and dancing together. We wanted to represent the lack of real presence and communication in a world where most human interactions have been virtualized and gone online. Our world has shrunk and we can’t stop falling prey to another rabbit hole that kidnaps our time and attention and prevents us from focusing on real 5-senses experiences in life. We have given away real friendships for Facebook, real relationships for Tinder and real political debate for Twitter. We knew that the video had to include the sea and the desert. The sea in the video represents life and our nature. The desert represents the void that we are left with, once we get regurgitated by addiction systems like addiction to digital devices.
Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
We didn’t really want to convey any particular message, to be honest, but I do hope that this video would inform and inspire people to take action to get out the dopamine rabbit holes typical of our time. And I also hoped that talking about it would also trigger a conversation about what I consider one of the most important phenomenons of our time.
Interview by Karla Harris