The Making of "What Goes Around" by The Anchoress

When I studied for my art history degree I was really interested in the conceptual performance work of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Hannah Wilke, and Matthew Barney, and eventually ended up writing a Masters thesis on performance art. This little video eventually turned out to be my small homage, in a way, to those artists I admired so much: A one-shot performance of the song in which I am subjected to a series of increasingly unfortunate incidents as the song progresses through a revolving onslaught of surreal and comical off-screen attacks. Just add a splash of blood, some neon paint and lashings of chocolate cake. Stir for ten hours...

The main idea behind the song is about the karmic balance of the universe, as reimagined through Newton's Third Law: " for every action in this world there's an equal and opposite action ". I wanted the video to be a metaphorical reenactment of karma-in-action as I was subjected to a series of increasingly unpleasant actions over the course of the song, unfolding in one long spinning motion.

The title of the song - "What Goes Around" - most obviously suggested a rotating movement at the centre of the video, and for some ridiculous reason I didn't think about the physical implications of being spun around continuously for ten hours of shooting. Suffice to say, the world carried on moving for a few days after the video shoot had ended...

The lyric of the song is sung from the point of view of the “wronged” party and I wanted to undercut that tradition of the scorned women that by turning the tables and playing the role of the accused myself, undergoing a series of unfortunate events as an act of karmic revenge. Carrying through many of the idea behind the album's overall conceptual challenge to expectations of confessional songwriting from female artists, I wanted the video to also turn the tables. This time, quite literally, as the whole contraption for filming was comprised on a stool atop a mechanical turntable.

There's not many music videos where the aim is to look worse by the end than when you started. I enjoyed the notion of subverting the expectation of looking your “best”. So much about being a musician can become focused on the way you look and dress and the way the video’s narrative unravels very purposefully subverts any expectation you might have of how women in music videos are typically presented.

The opening shot begins with my two-hour immaculately coiffed hair and pristine makeup - everything you’d expect from a standard music video - before rapidly descending into bloody noses, smeared makeup, and hair that looks like you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards... There’s certainly no room for vanity where PVA glue and high-pigment paint are involved. I was peeling that heady concoction out of my hair for days afterwards. Several clumps of hair were also sacrificed when some particularly stubborn patches wouldn’t wash out. “ You have to suffer... ”

It was quite difficult logistically to plot the shooting of the video’s storyboard as the cumulative narrative of “attacks” required a huge amount of pre-planning and clever “switch shots” on behalf of director Annick Wolfers. Everything had to be marked-up to within a millimetre of accuracy for placement in each shot, as any break in continuity would ruin the whole process and effect of a continuous “one-shot”. This was especially challenging for the very patient makeup artist Natasha Lawes, as layers of blood, makeup, cake and paint accumulated over the course of the song and couldn’t be removed or altered between each “attack”.

It was probably fortuitous that I didn’t really get a chance to stop and eat during the day of the shoot as when it came to the final set paint piece, the vast majority of the glue-acrylic mix ended up in my mouth. Turns out it’s hard not to swallow paint while you are singing at the same time as having a litre of it drip over your head. Combined with the inevitable motion sickness from being constantly spun around for ten hours almost non stop, you were lucky not to end up with a final shot of me vomiting something neon pink...

Watch the video below.