I’m happy to annouce that Aerea Negrot’s “It’s Lover, Love” is the winner of our third Catch Fire Music Video Award. Congratulations, and thanks to everyone who voted! The simple but beautiful clip was shot by Pablo Zuleta Zahr, a Chilean artist based in Berlin, who I’ve just interviewed in order to get some background information on the production and himself as an artist. Here’s what he wrote me.

UPDATE: Aerea has also send us a little statement to the song and the video as well as a picture of the shooting. You find both below.

Tell me a little bit about your background, you live in Berlin now, what do you do here and where are you from?

I was born and raised in Chile, and moved to Germany 1999 when I was 20. studied Art/Photography in Dusseldorf, and since 2001 I started coming to Berlin, until I finally moved here a bit later. Since then I had several exhibitions, mostly using video and photo as a medium.

How did you get in touch with Aerea?

Katrin, her manager, is a friend of mine. Katrin had told me they had a vague idea for a possible video, that somehow was related to a project I wanted to do in an old people’s home. Katrin though we could join forces for the shooting. We arranged a Skype conference and they send me the song and after listening to the track I got inspired and then brought up another idea. The initial idea I had for the track, was also one idea I though could work as an art collaboration in which maybe we could split material, I could use some scenes for the art context and others for the videoclip. But, as usual, that idea turned out to be too expensive. Instead of stressing ourselves, we gave ourselves 2 days of experimenting before going back to something that would cost money.

What would you say was the basic idea for the video?

Since the original idea was too expensive, the next plan was to meet, dress up, talk, drink coffee and try things out. We had shared some personal stories before the first day of experimenting, and there was this idea we wanted to try out in a graveyard. That curiosity lead us to the final idea of using the water surface of a basin In the graveyard. Somehow the energy of the place is still there although u cant really see any tomb or anything. My was to do a one shot/ no cut video that would show Danielle performing in front of the water that would reflect her movements with the sky in the background.

I was supposed to choreograf the movements in the surface of the water and work with lights. I knew I needed Aerea to perform a couple of times until we had one perfect sequence. I rented some light flashes and called some young friends to see if they had some time to help  – they are this really nice and creative kids all between 14 and 17teen. Each of them had a flash with a certain color and they also helped me creating waves and the fake rain. It was a very magical shooting atmosphere.

How does the film relate to the song?

The only literal relation to the song is when Aerea sings microwaves… The song is a love/break up song. A good-bye song. I decided to do something really simple, and use only a few metaphorical elements to express it.
Sunset is a common place for romantic love, rain is a common way to symbolize tears, I used both of them, pushed them and let them get out of control in an explosion of color in the distorted surface to symbolize the metamorphosis related to that emotional transit. Then there is smoke…a smoke curtain before disappearing… and then the 2 birds are crossing the sky, like some sort of sign of the future that points in  another direction.

What is your latest project?

I’m devoting a whole year to do collaborations. It’s a big project in which I work with different artist/friends doing performative portraits. They are manifesting in different ways though. There is a new video piece for an installation that is almost done. One is becoming an experimental film that I’m sort of directing over skype. There are 2 more projects with musician friends and I’m also trying to materialize an idea for an Art iPhone Application.

Here’s a picture of the shooting:

And here’s what Aerea wrote us:

“It´s lover, love”, besides being a love song, exlores the anticipation of love loss. I had a relationship that was slowly fading, therefore I was giving up, in the shape of music.
Years later, I found myself in a similar situation when a dear friend was going through health problems. In a way was also a preparation for a goodbye, which gladly didn´t happen!!! During that time, upon visiting Stockholm, I found myself at a party sort of recreating a funeral with inner sorrow… flowers in my hands.
This was a story I shared with Pablo when we were brainstorming for the video. But, instead of being dark and death oriented, Pablo´s idea was to record the video from water reflections… and those two birds in the end… I mean.
The most beautful story behind this all is that we had great help and interaction from these young friends of Pablo: Fabian, Uma, Clara, Magda, Miguel, Paul, Pablo, Lisa and I, thank you for voting!.