Dazed and Confused #70 ·· 10.00 ·· 'Chris Cunningham' ·· Nicky Bidder excerpt Dazed & Confused: How do these films compare with the past collaborations with Richard James? Chris Cunningham: Both of these two films are closer to the things I used to imagine doing before I got sent my first Aphex track and I loved his work. I never imagined doing something like 'Come to Daddy' or 'Windowlicker'; what I ended up doing for him was almost like comedy video. That's not just an opinion in retrospect ñ it's what I felt at the time. Both of those videos are like playground humour. The difference is that this work is probably less puerile, maybe. Once again, Richard James and electronic music inform the films you've produced. To what extent do you see this collaboration as integral to the way you work? I hope we'll always work together. I want him to do the music for any feature I take on. For drummer his music came first. For about 40 per cent of flex the same is true, and to be honest I'm waiting on the rest of the soundtrack to be made. He's just a fucking skiver basically. We lent him a beta player to sync up his music to my film and it turned out he was just using it to make scratching noises for his own tracks. I was like, wait a minute? How did these two commissions come about and do you see this step into the art world as transition? This was something I was gong to do a year and a half ago as a short for Film Four. Then as issues of full body nudity started to be raised I put it on the shelf, realising that it wouldn't be viable to produce and air it as I'd imagined it. So when Anthony d'Offay rang me wanting to commission me I took advantage of the opportunity. It's really weird that people want to pin you down all the time about what area you're working in. When a gallery asked me to do something for them, I thought maybe I'd get to express or explore one particular facet of what goes on in my mind. While I was directing music videos I never thought consciously that that was what I was doing. I was just getting to make these little films, little short films. The only thing that's changed in the last year is a few more cocks and a lot more blood. Things are looking up then? Part of what's enjoyable about doing music videos is that is satisfies this side of me which really likes restrictions. It's fun when the form has to be tight. When you sit down with a pen and paper to come up with an idea, there are certain things that are closed off to your precisely because its MTV and so there are shitloads of things that can work in a gallery that wont work on TV. I am not saying that means my music video audience is excluded. At the end of the day I just make films and this is just another venue. Given that the art world has embraced your previous films do you have any anxiety about the reception that these films might get? If I did have any anxiety it would be that the format of the music videos I was doing forces you to make things very robust and structured because the music's so structured. That's true of Drummer, probably the tightest, most robust thing I've done, but flex is the complete opposite: very sketchy and very loose. It is exactly what I wanted it to be but if someone goes along expecting it to be a neat five minute dose of 'what I do', it's not. At the end of the day, Drummer's a mad monkey rave-up and to be honest I can't wait to see what all the chin strokers make of it.