Siddharta are unveiling the video for Khanto, a track from their latest album X.
“The video for the song Khanta was made during a month-long stay in New York and Minneapolis. Everything that shows up in it is real. We didn’t have to invent a thing. America served up the material all on its own, hot, loud and already a little scorched around the edges.
I felt the song as a plague of the Western world. Something that spreads without sirens, without borders and without needing permission. It’s not coming anymore. It’s been here for ages. On our doorstep, in our phones, our desires, our anger and our exhaustion.”
“I often found myself in situations where filming people in public places was hardly an invitation to tea. Sometimes I felt like I was on an urban safari, hunting for human stupidity, which has clearly found the perfect climate on American soil. You didn’t have to wait long. You just had to stand on the right corner long enough. My wife Yuchen helped me the most with all of it. In temperatures up to 39 degrees Celsius, she was camera assistant, logistics, shadow, water and the occasional decoy model, so I could discreetly capture what was happening behind her back.
Khanta is the most dynamically edited video I’ve done so far. It cuts through 412 shots. Modern people are used to endless scrolling on their phones, where each new image wipes out the last before you’ve really taken it in. The video uses the same rhythm, except instead of an algorithm, the song dictates the flow of images. That’s not just a style. That’s a state of being.
So the video isn’t just a portrait of America. It’s a mirror in which we might recognize ourselves, too. This is already the fifth video we’ve worked on with Siddharta. Khanta is the most restless, the fastest and probably the most direct of them all.”
– Ven Jemeršič, director
