Remember Jeffrey Beaumont, the main character of David Lynch’s subversive suburban classic Blue Velvet? His whole life opens up (for better or for worse) when he finds a severed ear swarmed by ants. Replace that ear with a very, very old packet of Seriously Strawberry Nerds, and you’ve got this clip from mysterious newcomers Pup61.
Videographer Nick Baker zooms way in, close enough that we can see ants waving their antennae, flies rubbing their limbs, and the eroded edges and melted knobs of the candy package. Kassie Carlson (of Guerilla Toss and Jane La Onda) contributes the music, a dramatic skein of overlapping strings. Dana Demaglie explains what’s happening (“ants are strolling back and forth”), but her voiceover is more about presence than content — most of the actual words are processed into syrupy inaudibility — leaving the viewer to decide what’s really going on in this weird world under the grass.
