By Charley Ruddell
We are living in an age of environmental collapse–the Anthropocene–the latest ecological chapter in Earth’s history, in which humans have irrevocably impacted every major ecosystem. We stare into the ruins with the smoke of the human machine billowing from our backs.
As the sound dwindles from Montreal experimental folk group Year of Glad’s newest project “Aquatic Ruin,” a chorus of frogs chirp into the faded black. Lines of text appear above a digitized shot of a campfire: “In matters of life and death, there are breaks that define a before and an after. The Anthropocene is a break; we are in the after.” It’s a plea for restoration while extinction lurks within a sniper’s range.
Created and developed at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the gorgeously haunting video for “Aquatic Ruin” follows a horse-headed “hooded druid” through a digitally contorted dystopia. Creators A.P. Bergeron, Nicolas Bergeron, and Bucky Illingworth draw on the tension and trepidation in the song’s opening act, as A.P. rasps with a menacing scorn: “Heed my word / You pothead / It’s an awful game / Aquatic Ruin.” Low synths and static noise hum like an aftershock; drums rattle and churn with an impending eruption. The druid stands perched on the rock cliffs above bleached tides, saturated, distorted, and confined to the simulation against its own volition. “What an awful game,” Bergeron wails with despair as noise swirls around his voice like debris in a tornado.
Then, the vision breaks. The focus shifts, the warped portal closes. Reality emerges. Pristine images of water, earth, and sky feel like a consolation following the turbulence. We see the cloaked figure staring off into the crystal waters of a freshwater lake as the music softens. A single cello whinnies in the peeper’s cadence. “Lead the way,” Bergeron murmurs, his breath trailing the last word like a crisp zephyr.
“Aquatic Ruin” raises the alarm that the vision of our own reality is reversing. What once began as pristine and beautiful has devolved into distortion. We are the druids stuck in the simulation. We are in the after.