Holy Motors + Raven Artson

The director of Les amants du Pont Neuf and Mauvais sang is sometimes referred to as a mad genius, which in France is a badge of honour perhaps equivalent to equivalent surrealist genius. Why tie up a storyline nicely when you can, ehm, do it differently, to put it mildly?

In Holy Motors Carax invites viewers into a limousine with a rich eccentric (Denis Lavant), who constantly shapeshifts. Switching from businessman to murderer, to beggar, madman or family man, like a consummate actor he takes on ever new roles: but where are the cameras?

Holy Motors inspired the short film The Performer (2021) by Folkert Verdoorn, who will be in Eye for a Q&A. In this seven-minute short, a rockstar who has hit rock bottom prepares for a new performance, but can only pull it off with some heavy-duty help… the lead is played by musician and performer Raven Artson, who also wrote the score.

Ecstasy

Artson will then perform his music, which can be experienced as hypnotic slow-motion hyper pop; as otherworldly but also deeply human, and as one of those concerts where you just had to be there because it’s not every day you experience something right on the edge of ecstasy and supreme excitement. This is how Artson describes his shows; Leos Carax would surely approve.