Chris Cunningham is an embodiment of a time and place, of 1990s and early 2000s British underground cool, a moment when avant-garde art forms and personalities were enmeshed with the overground mainstream. Pop culture at large was still up for getting weird and transgressive, even during primetime, and commercials and promo videos were full of libido and artistry (just think of iconoclasts like Chris Morris and music-video talents like Hype Williams).
When I was a teen, two DVD collections were pivotal to me. The first was Palm Pictures’ Directors Label series, which compiled the visionary commercial and music-video work of such directors as Cunningham, Williams, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Mark Romanek, Jonathan Glazer, Anton Corbijn, and Stéphane Sednaoui, many of whom broke into feature filmmaking around the year 2000. The pipeline of working at an ad house, then making a promo, then directing a feature was a route to admire and aspire to for a whole generation of film-school students (and one that is now outdated and broken). The second DVD set, WarpVision: The Videos 1989–2004, was a showcase for the seminal record label from the north of England; alongside Cunningham’s videos for Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher, the DVD featured videos directed by Jarvis Cocker, Seefeel, and the Designers Republic. The collection brings back memories of when Gen-Xers made adverts and music videos that would get stuck in your head for weeks; these were visuals that defined the time.
Aphex Twin, “Come to Daddy” music video (Chris Cunninham, 1997).
This mix is a whirlwind exploration of one of the United Kingdom’s most admired and provocative visual artists and filmmakers, whose auteurist style took us from the end of the 20th century into the 21st. I decided to dive straight into the deep end of Cunningham’s vision—with a jolt of bleeps and bangs that are 100 percent Cunningham. Snippets of interviews through the years help give a sense of a filmmaker who visualizes sound with shapes, moods, and stories. At one point, you can hear Jonze, Gondry, and Cunningham talk about their process for the benefit of a Japanese television audience.
Born in 1970 in Reading, England, Cunningham got his start in the early ’90s working in the television, film, and comic-book industries. He made robot arms for puppets on Spitting Image (1984–96) before finding work as an artist for 2000 AD, Aliens, and Judge Dredd under the pseudonym Chris Halls. His specialties in model-making, illustration, and makeup gave him a point of entry into the film industry. Two of Cunningham’s earliest credits are now cult classics: Richard Stanley’s horror sci-fi Hardware (1990), for which he was a robotics technician, and Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (also 1990), for which he was a model maker. He found his niche in special effects for apocalyptic horror and science fiction, including David Fincher’s Alien³ (1992), Richard Stanley’s Brave (1994), and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection (1997).
Cunningham went back to his comic-book roots to do character makeup for Danny Cannon’s adaptation of Judge Dredd (1995), which caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick. He tapped Cunningham to bring his special-effects talents to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, specifically to make animatronic prototypes of David, the central robot-child character. Cunningham had been aboard the project for over a year when Kubrick put it on hold. The film would finally see the light of day in 2001 under the direction of Steven Spielberg; Cunningham’s special-effects work is uncredited.
During this time, Cunningham was bursting to branch out into his own filmmaking work. The mix begins at the point at which Cunningham took flight from the feature-film industry and into a myth of his own making. First came a wave of videos for a select group of musicians associated with Warp Records. Cunningham’s self-funded work on the promo for “Second Bad Vilbel” (1995), by Manchester duo Autechre, kicked off this relationship with the label; later he’d work with Squarepusher on “Come On My Selector” (1998). And, of course, there were his unforgettable videos for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” (1997) and “Windowlicker” (1999), a career-changing moment for both artists. Between an impossibly long stretch limousine, robotic mutations, and dancing girls and devilish children with the grinning, distorted faces of Richard D. James (Aphex Twin himself), a clear-cut vision was born. Aphex Twin’s intense music mirrors the debauched and sonically-driven visuals of Cunningham. The two would continue to collaborate and are intrinsically linked, two peas in the same pod.
Telecom Italia commercial (Chris Cunningham, 2000).
The mix begins with the majestic lullaby of Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” (1999). The music video, depicting a robotic love affair, showcases Cunningham’s wizardry when it comes to science-fiction aesthetics and his confident use of computer-imaging technology. There’s a few cuts from a 1999 Nissan car commercial and extracts from a great 2000 commercial for Italian Telecom featuring a young Leonardo DiCaprio; both are scored with luscious unreleased music from Warp associates Boards of Canada. This sun-drenched aesthetic carries over to his 2009 Gucci Flora perfume commercial, soundtracked by an off-kilter edit of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”; Cunningham traveled to Nashville to work on the edited vocals with Summer herself. In the video, model Abbey Lee bends her body in unhuman but beautiful ways in a field of flowers, just a bit “off” in that pure Cunningham way.
In these moments of tranquility, there is always a strange contradiction, something alien. In the video for the Horrors’ “Sheena is a Parasite” (2006), the incredible Samatha Morton plays a hellish mutant subject, who lifts up her dress to reveal her insides spilling out and back. Unrelenting strobe lights add to the video’s intensity and allegedly got it banned from UK television (apart from the health-and-safety warning, the gory undressing of Morton must be the most disturbing part of the video). One of my favorites is what we all called the PlayStation girl, from the 1999 “Mental Wealth” commercial for the gaming console, which features a nonprofessional Scottish actor, Fiona Maclaine, as an alien girl speaking in riddles.
PlayStation, “Mental Wealth” commercial (Chris Cunningham, 1999).
Alongside his trailblazing work with Aphex Twin, there are indie turns with Placebo in this mix, and the hauntology of Cunningham’s live reediting of Gil Scott Heron's “New York is Killing Me” (2010), in which a distorted version of the track adds a sense of melancholy to images of broken cities. Toward the end of the mix, we hear the beautiful opening of “Frozen” (1998), the William Orbit–produced Madonna masterpiece, which showcased the kinds of haunting imagery that Cunningham could conjure in a more minimalist register. In the video, a ghostlike Madonna hovers over the sand of the Mojave Desert; evoking the choreography of Martha Graham, she falls into herself in strange, crow-like, swooping silhouettes.
From technical experiments with night vision (most memorably, a scene in Rubber Johnny, 2005, that finds the protagonist wheelchair-bound and sniffing cocaine), filming underwater (Portishead’s “Only You,” 1997, allegedly Cunningham’s favorite of his videos), and robotics systems (his own live project, jaqapparatus 1, 2012), Cunningham is all about the push and pull of cold mechanics up against the living and breathing human form: a descendant of Francis Bacon from the rave generation, one could say. So it makes perfect sense that, after many short-film and live collaborations with Aphex Twin, Cunningham would venture out on his own, live-mixing music and images in concert and presenting his own video work in galleries. In 2008, he worked with Grace Jones on a series of photographs which mutated her bodily form into something totally new. In the last decade, he’s made fewer music videos, and he still hasn’t made a feature film (in 2004, he pulled out of an adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, apparentlyupon learning that he would not have final cut). Though he’ll still direct the odd advert every so often, it seems as though Cunningham’s attention is fixed on pushing the boundaries of moving image and sound in public performances; his work is as much at home on MTV as it is in a gallery or at a music festival. His mythology is steeped in these unpredictable appearances and disappearances.
Upon finishing and exporting this mix, I began listening back and turned to my boyfriend: “I dunno, I know I always say this about any work at the start, but this one sounds off, you know, a bit weird.” To which I got the most proper response possible: “You are making a Chris Cunningham mix. How else is it meant to sound?”
Portishead, “Only You” music video (Chris Cunningham, 1997).
TRACKLIST
- Björk, “All Is Full of Love,” All Is Full of Love (1999) 00:00
- Excerpt, Mirrorball, S1E6 (edit) (1999) 04:17
- Placebo, “36 Degrees,” 36 Degrees (1996) 07:05
- Gucci perfume commercial, Gucci Flora (2009) 10:01
- Autechre, “Second Bad Vilbel,” Second Bad Vilbel (edit) (1996) 10:59
- Sony PlayStation commercial, “Mental Wealth”(edit) (1999) 14:19
- Telecom Italia, “Quiet” (2000) 14:54
- Gil Scott-Heron, “New York Is Killing Me” (Chris Cunningham visual mix) (edit) 2010 15:54
- Excerpt, Rubber Johnny (2005) (edit) 19:15
- Aphex Twin, “Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix),” Come to Daddy (edit) (1997) 25:01
- Excerpt, Björk and Chris Cunningham interview (edit) (circa 1999) 25:17
- The Horrors, “Sheena is a Parasite,” Sheena is a Parasite (2006) 28:14
- Aphex Twin, “Windowlicker,” Windowlicker (edit) (1999) 29:49
- Squarepusher, “Come on My Selector,” Come on My Selector (edit) (1998) 35:53
- Excerpt, Mirrorball, S1E6, (edit) (1999) (edit) 38:49
- Portishead, “Only You,” Only You (1998) 40:36
- Nissan commercial, “Engine” (1999) (edit) 45:30
- Excerpt, MTV Screen, Directors Label, Japanese TV promo (edit) 46:22
- Excerpt, Warpaint, “Love Is To Die” (official documentary excerpt) (edit) 48:26
- Excerpt, jaqapparatus 1 (2012) (edit) 51:57
- Nissan commercial, “Engine” (1999) (edit) 54:29
- Excerpt, Monkey Drummer (2001) (edit) 54:49
- Leftfield and Afrika Bambaataa, “Afrika Shox,” Afrika Shox (1999) (edit) 1:59:00
- Orange commercial, “Photo Messaging,” Photo Messaging (2003) (edit) 1:04:55
- Excerpt, Chris Cunningham interview for ARTE, (2017) (edit) 1:05:33
- Madonna, “Frozen,” Frozen (1998) 1:05:59