Carl Warnick

Chris Vollan smoking in the parking lot at night on cardboard is the third Midnight video.

This is the second video of the Midnight series. Following the same system of action on cardboard on asphalt at midnight.

The soundtracks to these videos are constructed deliberately using a similar systematic structure. Mixed live, old songwriters pitched down and enmeshed in more current dark beats.

One of it’s concerns is a misreading of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness” as “River of Darkness”:

Tears I never had before
Ribbon of darkness over me
Clouds a-atherin’ o’er my head

Which I misread and chopped/rearranged to be:

Fears I’ve never had before
Bound together in all my years
River of darkness over me

I dubbed out Run-DMC’s “Mary Mary” into a sratched echoy mess, and strung it into the intro for Rick James’ “Cold Blooded”, and held the whole thing together with L-Wiz’s “Girlfriend”. Then I mixed in and rearranged Gordon’s text.

This pulls from several sub-genre I am obviously obsessed with: Screwed and Chopped, Dubscape, Midwestern Hardcore, and Singers and Songwriters of my childhood.

The video above was made in the summer of 2005. It has become a substratum for our upcoming show.

In the video Dawn is working on the car at midnight in a parking lot. She has pulled out the left driveaxel shaft and is replacing it’s CV boots. At a pivotal moment in the film the metal fastener band snaps back and cuts her thumb, filling her glove’s thumb with blood.

Several things are happening here that are of interest to me. One, the video uses the traditional male gaze of painting. Two, I have given up the masculine privilege of auto work. Three, the climax is a bloody violence, which in the final tally is nothing more than a jump in the heart, a small bandaid, and Dawn finishing the job at hand.