Death Driver

Death Driver emerged when I was looking for a song that the characters Chris (T. Ryder Smith) and Laura (Mitzi Akaha) could dance to. I wrote lyrics that I based on merging of Freud’s notion of the Death Drive with a kind of evil spirit called up from a ride-hailing sevice such as Uber. Silent Strike came up with the music and found the modulation of my voice that worked. In both the film I made directly before Ikonophile Z and the one I made afterwards psychoanalysis plays a big role. I was determined to keep psychoanalysis out of Ikonophile Z but it snuck its way in as Death Driver. We got such amazing feedback on the song I decided I had to embody him in the music video, in which I return to my roots in performance art. The make-up and style of Death Driver have two inspirations: in mime, which I studied for a few months in Paris with Etienne Decroux, and in Butoh, which I have admired and appreciated for many years and in which I took a workshop lasting a single day with Akihito Ichihara.