Billboard.com interview with Dave Gahan

Artist – NULL + VOID: WHERE I WAIT

Feat. Dave Gahan

Label – hfn

Director – Tim Saccenti

Director of photography – Tim Saccenti

Written with Steven Graf

Production – Holographic Thorns

Editor and visual effects – Matt Posey for ps260

Digital sculpture – Andy Rolfes + Sam Rolfes

3d Scanning – Narek Gevorgian

Additional shoot production – Whooden

Actors – Karolina Wallace and Rene Nunez

Description –

Null + Void Feat. Dave Gahan

“Where I Wait”

In the Null Void video, we follow a desperate character in her attempt to transcend a physical space. The environment is a dystopic, brutalist variation on an old theme: the stifled, domestic household. The refrigerator, the television, the wine bottles, and –most notably – the main character’s male counterpart evoke this dark theme. The cold lighting, concrete floors and metal containers further elicit the atmosphere of a prison.

The main character’s performance is mostly static, as though she is another object in the room. Her eyes are glazed over in reverie, the mode by which the action will follow. We are led to believe that she desires some sort of escape: a means by which to transcend the physically petrified status of her life. 

These reveries take various forms, limited by the sparseness of her environment. Dave plays a kind of narrator, floating around her dreams (sometimes actually), performing the song, alluding to the twofold nature of escape.

The objects of her fantasies all work as functions that move her psyche from one state to the next. The pills are a physical set piece that facilitates her hallucinations, i.e. her male counterpart; the knife is a physical set piece that facilitates her violent fantasy in regards to him; the broken wine bottles are a physical set piece that helps her imagine his role in the story; etc.

Most important is the television, which serves as a physical manifestation of these purely mental (intellectual) fantasies. Its formal role in the narrative is essential, and as the viewer’s perspective is fed through the television, we lose our place. What is real and what is the fantasy? In this way, we are able to identify with the protagonist.

After reality and fantasy are knotted together, they fracture, and the space is literally broken into parts. This is reminiscent of a familiar sensation at the end of a dream or reverie, when the idea comes together and then falls apart. The video thus gives us a picture of what the nature of escape can sometimes feel like: the ecstasy of  transcendence, the eluding of time, the total circumvention of life as a physical object.  – Steven Graf