Die Antwoord in London and artistic spirit of their work

Text and visu­als by Gintare Zitkeviciute

I just remembered this dif­fi­cult and even stu­pid ques­tion - what kind of music do you like? What is your favour­ite genre? All the time I hear this ques­tion I just feel like I stuck. How do you explain some­body in one sen­tence how music has changed? And even more how do you explain the age we live in? There are no genres. There are no rules and there are no defin­i­tions any­more. If you are still not sure, you either are stuck in the past and only listen to the music of your par­ents, or you just do not explore todays music. And by todays I mean hav­ing the spirit of this gen­er­a­tion and this age — we call it post­mod­ern­ism, alter­mod­ern­ism, remix cul­ture — who cares how it is called in the end? You can com­pare die Antwoord with hip­pies in their golden age, punk scene when it was still alive and hon­est, grunge when it was hot etc. etc. — the most import­ant thing here is that it is the music of today, you like it or not.

This evening’s gig at HMV forum in London left me speech­less. First of all I was amazed by this diverse and amaz­ing crowd of die Antwoord fans. Mix of cul­tures, sub­cul­tures, col­ours, motives, sym­bols, total amaz­ing­ness and visual mad­ness. I was spy­ing on die Antwoord from the very begin­ning, when they just released their first crazy video and launched the web­site. Band itself always plays on the edge of pop cul­ture, irony, rebel and mys­ter­i­ous ZEF style, which makes you ask, laugh and won­der — are these guys play­ing a role? Can I spot some fake? I myself had never got a cour­age to write about them or make any con­clu­sions about their cre­ation. It is just too subtle, too hid­den, still too fresh and even dan­ger­ous. You kinda think they are going to make the wrong move, become one more doll of these rich pro­du­cers which make bands “BIG” or in other words “SHIT”.

However, it did not hap­pen to die Antwoord yet! It is a per­fect time to enjoy their enthu­si­asm and hun­ger for audi­ence. You can feel that they love what they do and they do it with the biggest pas­sion. Honestly, I haven’t seen such a crazy and wild gig for a while. The stage and space was shak­ing, secur­ity just gave up, people were get­ting naked and doing all they desire!

But any­way, those are not the reas­ons why I fell for die Antwoord in the begin­ning and why I still carry on check­ing out everything new they cre­ate today. The most import­ant things I respect in their work are visual lan­guage, irony, intelligence, rep­res­ent­a­tion of South Africa, innov­at­ive approach and just really artistic spirit. For example look­ing at their visu­als, you will notice that it is per­fect and very high qual­ity not only in their online pro­duc­tion, but also while play­ing the gigs. Todays gig proved it again — every detail, from clothes, to light, stage dec­or­a­tion, move­ments — everything is set up so it would give you visual orgasm. And by irony I mean their over­all style of com­mu­nic­a­tion and atmo­sphere. There are a lot of things I could dis­cuss, but their work speaks for itself.

Well, I just want to wish die Antwoord to stay in the same spirit, not to sell their asses out and cre­ate even more amaz­ing work! To me they are more than just a band, I value them as artists, hope­fully they will not loose this cha­risma they brought to the town!

If you never heard about die Antwoord before, check out their web­site and videos!

Moments before the gig

About author:

Gintarė Žitkevičiūtė
Gintare Zitkeviciute is Art Pit’s thinker and doer. In her work practise, she values lean approach, creativity and quick decisions. She doesn't like working with random people and thinks that a team is a heart of successful project. For that reason, she carefully picks people she works with on everyday basis. She is mostly interested in innovatio... Read further >