Video: “Vessel” by Dan Mangan + Blacksmith

“Vessel” by Dan Mangan + Blacksmith, off the album Club Meds (available January 2015).

Of the video, director Ben Clarkson says: “It is complicated to open a conversation about the way we depict our history and our identity. Stories are powerful, and the way histories are told often reinforce the power of the powerful. How we tell the story, how our oral, written and visual traditions transmit interpretations of the past affects our behaviour, our ontology, here in the present. I would love to discuss how there are different histories. I believe that the quiet stability that many of us enjoy is a phantasm. I believe we have a great deal of work to do in order to live with one another in a way that agrees with our values (or the values we’d like to have). History is not finished and we must take ownership of it, or others will do it for us.”