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WOMEN IN MOTION
GIRLS ON FILMVideographer Rik Sanchez finds zen capturing the beauty and hidden moments of Japanese models and dancers in his art-fashion videos
Text by Damon Smith
Video stills by Rik Sanchez
Whether it's shooting promos for clothes designers, a fashion show, or a neighbor painting her face, videographer Rik Sanchez loves documenting women and their movements. Hence the title of his work in progress, "Women in Motion," which Rik will show as a gallery installation in Osaka this spring.
"I see it as documenting me and friends and what they're doing," Rik says of his work. "They just happen to be models, and I'm just trying to capture their beauty on film."
Rik's work draws its viewers into the world of fashion shoots, catwalk shows, and behind-the-scenes and up-close private vignettes of young Japanese women.
It's a world filled with anime-like, cyberpunk nymphettes teasing the camera and pulling each other's hair, anonymous women painting their lips, pulling lighters out from under their bras to torch cigarettes.
On Rik's planet, fashion show vixens dance like wind-up toy robots. The visuals are spellbinding, ambiant collages, mixing the hyper-speed sounds of hardcore breakbeats and techno-pop. His videos amount to documents of ideal beauty and the female form at work and play.
Before working with video, Rik had been doing photography. As he began fooling around with Hi-8 handheld video cameras, he was quickly seduced by the aesthetics of motion, and gradually, after getting his hands on some basic editing equipment, gave up still photography altogether in favor of video.
"Photography is cool but you only get one part of the moment," he explains. "With video you get to see the beginning and after, the full motion, of the moment. Plus with sound you can add another dimension to it. Video is as real as you can get without being there."
Many of Rik's ideas for videos are a natural extension of themes and subjects he developed in his earlier photographic works.
"Before I always did photo exhibits - nudes or fashion - now I want to show these women with this art-fashion context, but with the benefits of motion. With motion you can see the grace of how the models move."
If you look at photo of a dancer then you really don't know what their dancing is like, but when you see the video you can really appreciate everything. That was my basic idea for my last show. To show the still image and also show what happened before and after that image was taken."
Rik has been making his videos for four years. Though he admits a love of the female form and enjoys creating beautiful images of women from behind the viewfinder, there's another ethic at work in his modus operendi.
"Ten or twenty years from now when these models and dancers look back on the videos,no amount of money will buy the happiness that they'll get when they see themselves at that young age and how they really were."
"I'm trying capture a slice of their soul on film. The women in these videos don't really see themselves in the way they appear on screen, but watching the videos they step out of themselves. They get to see themselves in a way that they never really imagined."
Rik appears as a commited disciple of the independent, underground ethic. And though he does some professional video production for money, it's not the driving force behind his art. He's strict about who he'll shoot and work with and the kinds of
projects he'll work on.
"If the people involved are good friends then
its no problem. If someone I don't know comes up and says 'I'll pay you
this much money to make this video for me,' but I'm not into what they
are doing, then I won't do it," he explains.
"It's cool to make money for video work, but not to the point where you become a whore and do it just for the money. I have to like the idea - it has to be fun."
Rik cites Steve Yamaguchi, visual directer for one of Japan's largest clubs, Osaka superclub Hight Camp Qoo, as an example of someone with "fun" ideas and with whom he has collaborated.
Fun or not, Rik's work is time intensive, at tedious, and requires spending hours at a time surrounded by lots of raditation-generating electronics and video screens. It's a real labor of love that requires juggling different technologies and skills at a fast pace, and over long stretches.
After shooting on location or in a studio, he edits his video in a small Japanese-style room in his apartment that serves as an office and post-production space. It's filled with computer, mixing and video equipment.
While the cameras are state-of-the-art digital toys, the editing process is definately "lo-fi." Rik tweaks his footage with a Videonics MX-1 mixer, manually editing in real time. Though, like any technophile, he says he's eager to get his hands on more sophisticated equipment and learn new techniques.
Rik explains that his interest in the visual arts began when his father gave him his first camera at age 13. In fact, his father's influence was instrumental, and "Chorizosmells Video," the moniker under which Rik makes his videos, is an homage to his father.
"Chorizo is
a spicy mexican sausage," Rik explains, "but being a Chicano from El Paso, Texas, that's
not why I chose that name. It's
actually a play on words for one of my father's books, Hechizospells.
My father was the late Chicano poet Dr. Ricardo Sanchez, and he would
call that book 'Chorizosmells.'"
For the future, Rik will continue to amass footage for "Women in Motion" and show his work, as well as put together fashion show videos like the "Osaka Alternative Collections Volumes One and Two" for Japanese "indies" design houses and underground noise bands. But his eyes are already restless with the thoughts of branching his video work onto the Internet and cyber-TV projects. His attitude about it is laidback enough though.
"I just wanna keep making cool images," he says. "Well, I hope they're cool, and people will like them. People liked my video at the last show, and I was surprised. But in the end all that matters is that I like it."
Though Rik ultimately judges the impact and quality of his work on his own terms, he admits that there are some critics whose opinions he values highly.
"It's important to me that the model likes the video, too. If they like it, then I know it's good."
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