Two men sitting in a meditation position, connected through a vegetal-like device that projects them into an adjacent world beyond the senses of objective reality. No, it is not the Matrix, but a kind of reinvention of this formula that has already become a classic in the world cinema. Also, ‘LINOLEUM‘ is not a short film, but a dynamic music video in which, through the visionary force of director Niki Noves, Alain Chamfort’s song gains an intriguing consistency beyond the discursive interface of lyrics that speaks of the near-pathological state of the isolated person who hopes for a final redemption through the full assumption of their very human condition. Despite its popularity in the artistic area, whether it’s music, visual, or performative arts, the theme of loneliness has something new in Alain Chamfort’s song, becoming a catalytic element assumed with the fervour of a martyr by which the individual, confronted with the ancestral chromosomal domino that has conditioned their own birth, can go beyond the material stage of existence to move into a more sublime world beyond the life-dead cycle. It is not accidental that Niki Noves’ vision feeds somewhat from the oriental space of Buddhist practices, where the equilibrium between the material and the spiritual world is sustained by a continuous awareness of the suffering and fragility of earthly life.
The two interconnected men – the protagonists of this music video – together with their transcendent projections, suggest the coexistence of light and darkness, flesh and spirit, reason and instinct, all in the narrow space of the same world. As a consequence, the meditating self, embodied by Alain Chamfort, places himself between the supreme plus and the supreme minus, between the “last of bastards” and the “first of humans” while his body is, like the other individuals inhabiting the same world, the archive of the entire humanity’s genetic heritage.
The somewhat metaphysical sense of this song becomes the main engine by which Niki Noves orchestrates this clip, contributing to the creation of a minimalist universe capturing the spectator’s eye precisely through the simplicity of contrasts between light and darkness, between the fluid movements of the protagonists, a melange of trance, abstract choreography and martial arts, and the statism of the other characters that become a kind of ‘raisonneurs’ of the soul during his passage from the material universe to the world of spirits, where he will rediscover, as child, his entire genealogy. Without being a light musical project for a wide audience, ‘LINOLEUM’ is a tender confession that combines the poetic qualities of the lyrics and the special voice of an artist with the vision of a sensible and intelligent director.
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