Hardeep Pandhal
Dragon Piece
17 June – 15 July 2022
MattFlix presents Dragon Piece, a new homemade music video directed by MIDIevil AKA artist Hardeep Pandhal.
The work is associated with an ongoing graphic narrative that began in the mode of a sword and sorcery adventure based on reality. It told the story of a brown man on a collective quest to see a performance by a Tolkien-themed black metal band, which climaxed with “tentative stomps to the head” of the brown protagonist during the story’s concluding section: a battle between the brown man’s party and a group of black metal fans. This moment, and its retelling, enabled Pandhal to both enter and sense himself entering what he calls ‘MIDIevil states of being’, states in which rare and honest parallel thoughts manifest themselves in images and sounds.
Adopting aspects of the Bildungsroman, a literary genre of works that focus on the psychological and moral growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood, Dragon Piece belongs to a wider project concerned with detailing the causes and effects of becoming MIDIevil.
Duration: 2’59”
Filmed by Peasant Productions
Audio mastering by Amir Shoat
Sound Production by Stef Sadler
Vocals by MIDIevil
Commissioned by Matt’s Gallery for MattFlix
With support from Art Fund and Arts Council England