Queen of the Universe

Video for Jack Adaptor's song 'Queen of the Universe' from their album THE SPOILER VERSIONS made in collaboration with Jamie Quantrill and Pete Jiadong Qiang, 2017.



The collaboration between artist John Walter and cinematographer Jamie Quantrill for Queen of the Universe is the latest in a long line of videos that they have made over the past ten years that negotiate the visual excess of Walter's pictorial maximalism and the melancholy of Quantrill's narrative cinema. They were drawn to the song for its intense sadness. Walter has said of the bridge "that it is an emotional crescendo that feels like meeting an ex lover after years apart." The video literalises certain images from Jack Adapter's lyrics - the mascara, the butterflies - and re-stages them. We follow a day in the life of a recluse, Pearly King, who lives vicariously through a virtual reality world of his own invention that is cartoon-like, brightly coloured and illuminated in contrast to his real surroundings. In his parallel universe he can come alive and breathe free.

https://www.jackadaptor.com/