ANOHNI’s “Hopelessness” Video is a Fever Dream Fusion of Corporatism and the Countryside

Artist and activist ANOHNI shared the music video today for the title track of her political-minded album, Hopelessness.

The visual treatment, by filmmaker Alexander Carver, features ANOHNI as the lead character, a well-dressed corporate woman in the throes of a fever dream. Carver said of the video's imagery in a press release: "Distant past and distant futures are irrationally fused in a bizarre, iconic vision of martyrdom where animals are citizens and people are drones." In one scene, ANOHNI watches a group of people solemnly confront a horse with a document titled The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals before running away. Later on, she is seen in a limousine as she sings of "taking more than I deserve, leaving nothing in reserve."

Also in a press release, she discussed the song's lyrical content: "I am a human, a warm-blooded creature. I love the kaleidoscopic faces of life on earth. Yet my species is aggressively destroying biodiversity and poisoning the biosphere. It is hard to accept myself. I feel like I am behaving like a virus. I keep lying to myself in order to continue forward."

Watch the video above, and read our feature with ANOHNI about Hopelessness.