Watch: Fear of Men “Luna”

26 Mar 2014 — Parker Bruce

Brighton's Fear of Men are the coolest art history professors we've ever had in their new video "Luna". The FADER's Emilie Friedlander puts it best describing Fear of Men as having "an enigmatic habit of adorning their releases with photos that look straight out of the ancient art wing of a museum." She continues, "Their first two seven inch-singles, respectively, featured busts of Nefertiti and the Virgin Mary, and their inaugural EP, Early Fragments, starred a half-disintegrated sculpture of the Greco-Roman variety. The cover of their debut LP...continues in that neoclassical vein..."  This consistancy is a product of bandmates Jessica Weiss and Daniel Falvey who spearhead the Fear of Men asthetic (this 4eyes TV video for "Mosaic" helped out too.) Expanding on Friedlander, the signature of Falvey and Weiss' work is a piece of pottery or sculpture (though now, with "Luna/Outrun Me," they seem to be into archealogy and fossils) contrasting against a single-color backdrop, a look we've seen in artwork for Blouse as well with last year's Imperium. Now that we've travelled through art historical time, let's graduate and jump into the not-so-distant past. This is where Marina Abramovic comes in. She is perhaps best known as the woman who sat at a table at the MoMA staring at people for hours a day in 2010, but she has been making work for about forty years. Some of her imagary would work in a music video setting, like "The Lovers: The Great Wall Walk", where her and her partner in life and art staged the ultimate break up: they traveled the Great Wall of China from opposing sides and upon finally encountering one another, ended their relationship. Or the piece "Rhythm 0", where Abramovic put out items and tools for visitors to use on her naked body however they wanted. For Fear of Men's lesson on Abramovic, they give us "Dragonhead" and "Rest Energy." "Dragonhead" is at once Weiss doing Abramovic and Britney (there's a snake involved.) The color red is prominent throughout the video with Weiss wearing it, the screen turning the color at various points, and a vase filled with red paint shattering and reassembling. It all acts as a reference to the blood Abramovic has shed for her art. Here's hoping the next Fear of Men video is all about Carolee Schneemann! Your new favorite class is in session below. Fear of Men's first album, Loom, finally comes out on Brooklyn's Kanine Records on April 21st in the United Kingdom and April 22nd in the United States. And if you love zines like we do, be sure to get the "Luna/Outrun Me" zine/7" combo when it comes out on Exeter, UK-located Art is Hard Records on April 7th. Now start reviewing those flashcards!