The Architecture Of Creation

Epic international projects snap straight into smaller-scale domestic ones for Kris Moyes, and performance art collaborations are taken during tea. At the end of last year, Australia's ARIA Award-winning, super sought-after music video director – who's made clips for the Softlightes, Beck, Sia, The Presets and many others, took out triple j's Music Video Of 2012 and returned from a hectic two months in New York creating the video for Grizzly Bear's A Simple Answer.

“I guess the general perception is that, as a director, you get set-up in a hotel room, you get a text from your producer, your car's waiting downstairs, you arrive on set, do the shoot and someone takes care of all the back-end stuff. But I performed the role of 70 humans [on the Grizzly Bear project]. It damn-near killed me,” Moyes says. “When it's a project that I have complete control over, like this one, I want to make sure that I can get my vision realised to the letter.”

It was for Kirin J Callinan's song, Way II War, that Moyes won the triple j gong and they'll collaborate again for Melbourne's Sugar Mountain Festival. The two met years ago, after Callinan's time with Sydney dream-pop outfit, Mercy Arms. “I greedily wanted to work with the band because of him,” he says. “I'd seen him live a few times and was just like, 'This guy is out of control!'.

“Then years later, we were both at a party. I basically rushed at him, I spilled the beans, I was, like, [creepy voice] 'I wanna work with yoouu'. Four years after that he called me up and said, 'I've got this psychotic piece of music that's in a demo format, that I recorded in LA. Let's do something'.”

The jerky, primarily black and white clip has Callinan as its delusioned protagonist, mirrored then usurped by a young boy and “grounded” by a burqa-clad woman. The kernel of Moyes' intention was to depict “the fractured memories of a man who slowly loses his grip on reality”.

“Then it just so happened,” Moyes explains, “that the actress' son was on set and at the last second we said, 'Can we use him? Can we get him and Kirin to mirror each other in the game?' And we just kind of did it on the fly. And it totally works.

“It's a combination of carefully considered conceptual groundwork and spontaneity, which is key to all the stuff I do.”

This, his exacting attitude and his ability to underscore an intense conceptual sophistication with technical motifs, are all hallmarks of Moyes' work. He describes a fascination for the art of cinema and a belief that power comes from the “architecture of the creative process” as continued drives.

Speaking just before Christmas, Moyes and Callinan's Sugar Mountain project had a scope, if not a form. “At this stage it's in its incubation period, but suffice to say it's going to be the most talked about thing in 2013.

“We're asking ourselves, 'Is this going to be something performance-based with backing visuals? Would it be a cinematic experience? Or is it a combination?'. Either way, Kirin's going to be there… Expect something like Way II War, but next level. It's going to evoke an emotional response from people, that's for sure.”