The sole comment for Karina Garcia Casanova's music video "Disown, Delete" on Ourstage.com reads,"The most unpretentious and most interesting music video I've seen in a very long time," a statement that sums up succinctly the mood of the artistic piece that at turns both graces and provokes thought for its audience. With more than 15 hours of storm-chaser Rich Horodner's footage on hand, Garcia Casanova worked to mix the rhythm and meaning of Ensemble's song to the footage's study of destruction.

"I had cut out all the imperfect storm footage. I thought, 'Oh, no we don’t want to see the windshield and the raindrops on the glass,'” Garcia Casanova says. But, while collaborating with editor Omar Majeed, this changed, the story riding along a more personally reflective avenue. "(Omar & I) realized, “No, it actually really adds to the song. It really includes the storm-chaser within the video," she says.

Quiet and lovely, feelings only enhanced by the litling vocals of Cat Power, "Disown, Delete" moves in an odd stillness, occupying the liminal space rendered between what exists and what is no longer. Here Garcia Casanova joined by Ensemble musician Olivier Alary speak about the video's structure, the necessity of destruction and consumption of "music art" versus "music entertainment."

SM: Can you define the structure (of the video) for me a bit more and tell me about working with cuts on the move and working with the rhythms? What were the challenges of doing those things?

Alary: The song is very dramatic, and it doesn’t need a climax; for that reason it’s not that defined, so Karina had to find some sort of organic way of representing the rhythm but not having something cut to the beat really. So what she did—the whole progression is that it starts in the morning, finishes at night and after you have the resolution. There’s a density and speed of elements that’s pretty slow and minimal. Then it gets more tense and more dense,…There’s a real tension in the song, and she really managed to materialize that tension.

SM: Is there a particular shot or sequence within the video that still strikes you guys as you watch it now?

Garcia Casanova: Is there one part of the song that bothers you? One part of the video?

SM: Oh, no. A piece that strikes you well, that you’re happy with. It’s all about the positivity.

Alary (laughing): She’s better at negativity.

Garcia Casanova: There’s a little shot inside the car where you see the map. It’s really close to the beginning, and you see the map laid out on the dashboard. That to me is very powerful. Then in the climax near the end where you just see rain; it’s very blurry, a really sustained black.

Alary: It’s really the counterpoint. It’s more sustained; it’s not just destruction. I love that shot also…Then there’s one—it’s right after the shot that I don’t really like in the video, which is the house crumbling down. Right after the house crumbling down, there’s a close-up of this traffic light being pushed by the wind. It’s a gorgeous shot. It’s so dynamic, so fast.

SM: Normally, when we think about destruction, hurricanes, there’s an incredible violence, and there is that inherent violence in the video. But, I don’t know if it’s something about the song, shots or the way it’s cut, but I found myself wanting to accept the destruction as a natural course.

Alary: Oh, yeah. The whole song is about the necessity of destruction. This is how human beings work. Revolutions and changes are made because we are forced to do so. We need something really powerful, something to destroy us to finally elect change. The song’s about that. The song’s about us being against this wall and this wall crumbling so we can create change. We need this violence to have change.

Garcia Casanova: I don’t know about that though. To me, it’s an acceptance, not seeing nature in this romantic sense but just trying to accept the indifference of nature and finding a beauty to this violence. It’s terrifying, but it’s also fascinating.

SM: More and more people are talking about humans being a part of this and our negliance of being environmentally conscious causing it. What is the line we walk between saying, “This is the natural progression of the way the environment works and artistically we’re going to respond to the environment, or our art is derived out of the fact that we are causing this?”

Garcia Casanova: That’s also part of—I don’t want to talk about human nature or anything—that accepting. It can be reactionary, but that accepting that this is how humans are is a second level. Perhaps I’m very negative, but I don’t think there’s that much we can do.

Alary: I think it's true. It’s like this is an environment that is going to change us, and now we’re not going to change the environment.

Garcia Casanova: No, I’m just saying that I don’t...

Alary (laughing): Come on. Get into it.

Garcia Casanova: ...With any philosophy I shed, it’s buried deep inside of me. I don’t talk about these things anymore.

SM: Well, this is a fun question that I ask any artist that I’m talking with. What is one question that you’ve always wanted to be asked about the way you approach your artwork but you’ve never been asked?

Garcia Casanova: I personally don’t like being asked questions. I’d rather have other people talk about what they think my work is about. I’m a very intuitive person, and I don’t really articulate that way. But, Olivier, how about you? You get interviewed a lot.

Alary: Are you happy?

SM: That’s a good one. Are you happy?

Alary (laughing): I don’t know yet. No, yes I am...The thing is with questions there’s also this ego thing. I don’t like to talk about me. I’d rather talk about the music so I always reorient the question. Even if it’s a bad question, I’ll go on a tangent and reply to the question that I wanted to reply to. So maybe the best question would be, “Can you just go on a tangent from that question, please?”

SM: Well, I’m going to let you go on a tangent with this one because you might want to wax philosophical more about this. What is the point for you? Why is it that you make music? You said when you first started, what you wanted to explore was the intersection between melodic noise and disjointed pop. Why is it that you continue to make music now? And, Karina, why do you make films?

Alary: I feel that it’s a necessity for me. I’ve reached 32 now, and this is what I can do. After a while in life, you’re like, “I can do this, this and this.” But, now you reach a point where you’re like, “I’m good at that, and I want to do it.” I make music as records and also some for film. This is what I do; this is how I make money. It’s a vital necessity I find.

What drives me a lot is how shitty the music business is and how shitty music is. Music can provide so much; it can really have an effect on people where they actually feel things they didn’t feel or see things in a different way, and it provides something that is not the dominant culture, provides some inside thoughts. For me it’s a necessity. It’s not that I feel the world needs it, but I feel I have something to add or something to say, and I’m not so bad at it. I just feel it in my soul deeply. If I didn’t do it, I would just be miserable.

Garcia Casanova: I don’t know if I contribute anything to the world, but it’s a personal necessity. I need to make films. I’m still learning. I have only recently, for the past five years, been making films so at this point, yeah, it’s becoming a craft. It’s what I’m learning to do, and so that’s what I do. Some people can build things; I can make films.

As to the greater role of my films, I don’t know. Obviously, I’m not trying to change the world. I don’t want to. If my films can have an impact on people at some point—not at this level I don’t think—that would be great, but I’m really driven by a need to create.

Alary: I don’t believe in the impact of music changing the world. I believe in art changing the world.

Garcia Casanova: With music I can see that more than with film. There are just too many films out there, too much television. I’d rather people live than spend their time watching television. I always feel conflicted about making films, but at the same time, I am so touched by powerful film. But, there’s just so much crap out there that sometimes I wonder if I want to add to that pile.

Alary: I feel the same way.

SM: The accessibility to film and to making film, even though it’s getting easier, is still not as simple as with music. Music is one of those art forms that’s accessible to a mass amount of people a greater majority of the day.

Alary: I do agree, and I don’t. It’s true that the tools of production are accessible to a lot of people now in music and film, but also the notion of music nowadays has been so jeopardized by library music jingles and entertainment music, the same with Hollywood and cinema. But, the thing is there’s way less Hollywood cinema than there is shitty music, music that’s used in elevators and those spaces. For example, the shittiest, trite techno is called music. It should be called entertainment, not music.

SM: So, is there a necessity to differentiate the lines between what you’re saying is entertainment and art? Do we need to as viewers then make that distinction?

Alary: I would love for people to realize what they’re consuming. I know it’s not possible…They don’t even realize that they’re listening to wallpaper and nothing else. A lot of the industry is driven to create this six-month transient, wallpaper music. Even in the indie scene, it’s so ridiculous. It’s more like they have the urge to create a stylistic product where it has the perfect video fitting to the beat, with the perfect outfits…Even if it’s big, in five years, people won’t even remember…

Garcia Casanova: Are you bitter, Olivier?

Alary (laughing): No, no. I’m not bitter at all.

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