BRENDAN MACLEAN | “Hotel Drowning”

Featured on The Australian Review

Featured on Accidental Bear

Shortlisted for the 2017 Corvallis Queer Film Festival, Oregon U.S.A

This video portrait of Brendan Maclean uses an original sound piece by the pop artist himself.

A subversion of a ‘pop music video’ as well as a dissection into Maclean’s public and private personas and issues with mental illness, social media, isolation, love, identity and psyche.

I spent one night in a hotel room with Maclean, filming with two cameras and a projector. The quarantine suits relate back to my own practice exploring body value systems in queer men as well as isolating the body as a type of physical symbol for depression. The use of water and metaphor for water within the video acts as a journey and a birth or rebirth of sorts, seeing Maclean re-invent himself, through music / social media / music videos, again and again. “This is my projection of Brendan, and my understanding of a hugely talented, hard-working, successful member of the LGBTQI community and entertainment / creative industry.

But it is also my understanding of somebody that constantly, and publicly, deals with difficult authentic emotions, feelings, thoughts, mental illness and personal struggles in both the performative social media eye as well as personally. Which is something, obviously, I massively respect and admire.”

2017 Corvallis Queer Film Festival Shortlisted

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