Exploring the powerful and irreconcilable tension between commercial advertising and fine art. Using an audio video installation playing on a loop, communicative languages warp, design is beautifully abstracted but blocked and concepts are made to jar.
The film abstracts the many signs and symbols of corporate advertising, social communication from their natural context, and observes them as art. In some cases, the beauty remains, in others meaning is obscured, significance is lost, disruption takes president and surfaces are played upon. This tension is profound; it is a powerful tension within, swinging precariously between a wish to resolve and a need to scream. It Might Blow Up, But It Won't Go Pop is a piece of work that is poised on this very delicate point.
The title of the film is taken from the looped lyric in De La Soul’s third album ‘Buhloone Mindstate’ released in Sept. 1993. The hookline "It Might Blow Up, But It Won't Go Pop" is repeated over and over, until the sound of a balloon popping replaces the final word "pop" - the hope of expanding their artistic popularity, without selling out.
A Film To Break Down Walls
Consisting of the entire canvas of the city of Berlin, as seen through the eyes of a camera lens, It Might Blow Up, But It Won’t Go Pop coincides with the celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down this November. The city now reflects a fusion of commerce and creative expression: young, challenging, progressive.
Timely and universal in its expansive subject matter, this new piece of work reflects the push-and-pull tension between fine art and advertising, exploring the necessary and positive ways in which they continually inform one another. The film explores themes of dependency traversing between the two forms, and mirrors the search for coherence that most artists and commercial artists strive for throughout their careers. Focusing on societal compartmentalizing and categorizing that leads to inevitable tension and the pressure to conform, a constant stream of fragmented, compelling, juxtaposed imagery and sound, shows us that we do not need to conform – that walls are there to be broken down, and ideas and expressions can be shared fluidly.
For Shah this realisation that each form cannot completely survive without the other, is the creative force. Fine art demands to be seen and in order to do this, needs to be advertised, while advertising consistently looks toward art for influence, or to hijack ideas that meet the demand of its audience. This duality can be unified and celebrated. This necessary and relevant film strives to bring expression, and the work, to its highest peak where the two forms are unified. Commerce and art living as one in a unified world.
Directed & Produced by Vishal Shah
Music by Dr. Adam Stanović
First Editor - Jakob Kienzerle
Editor / Motion Designer - Serge Castro
Motion Designer - Dave Goodall
Photographer - Rick Schubert
Film Installation: 24/7 Single channel loop - networked over 6 signage display panels. Stereo sound
Duration: 3’ 00’’
Authorship: 2019
Origination: 4k Resolution 3240 x 3840 50fps 4:4:4 pixel encoding
Sound: Stereo 44.1 kHz/24 bit
Aspect Ratio: 27:32
