Picture Tree Director Wim Steytler has collaborated with Okmalumkoolkat to create a music video that’s as much a thrilling musical journey as a compelling contemplation on what it means to be rejected by society. The video is for “Holy Oxygen” – the title track off Okmalumkoolkat’s debut solo EP, Holy Oxygen 1. Released by Austria’s Affine Records in August 2014, the EP has rapidly established the Durban-born rapper as a significant force in taking Mzansi’s future sounds to the world. In creating the “Holy Oxygen” video, Steytler worked with Simiso Zwane – aka Okmalumkoolkat – to conjure up a gritty wasteland populated by a group of plastic-wrapped roaming outsiders who have been quarantined because of illness or social dysfunction; women, men and children “unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody” as the Mother Teresa quote that opens the video says.
Propelled by the song’s futuristic hip-hop beats, the video transverses a narrative terrain that sees Okmalumkoolkat move from being a man infected with a nameless disease into someone who creates a new society where those who might have been diseased or who are still suffering are welcomed in equally. The concept for “Holy Oxygen” was sparked in part by Okmalumkoolkat’s lyrics of abandonment and redemption – “Why do you think I’m rapping? / You don’t know what happened / I was never happy when my father left me / Left me as a baby way back in the 80s” and, later “Grow into a heavy ou/Songs on the radio/I hope you see me in a video”.
It also emerged out of Steytler’s blossoming reputation as a fearless director capable of bringing issues of social justice into popular culture – seen most recently in Haezer’s “Minted” video. “I am very interested in creating a body of work that isn’t afraid of putting society’s most pressing social issues into a context of popular culture,” Steytler says. “It’s a great place to open up dialogue about sometimes uncomfortable topics, especially among young people.”
The visual element of “Holy Oxygen” was influenced by Okmalumkoolkat – a talented graphic designer with an ability to reimagine the worn-out “African aesthetic”. This combined brilliantly with Steytler’s immersive working method. “I shot a lot of Holy Oxygen myself, just on solo trips into the locations I found,” explains the director. “The plastic and other elements that you see in the video were found during these trips and the idea of wrapping people in it came quite spontaneously – like a lot of what we shot.” Adding their irreverent, uniquely African conceptual aesthetic to the mix was lauded concept and design agency Jana+Koos who did the styling for “Holy Oxygen”.
Okmalumkoolkat’s inventiveness with sounds and words is matched by Steytler’s ability to inject an element of magic realism – the burning bushes; loose plastic that flies around like UFOs – into the video’s narrative. “The video is very much a stylised documentary approach that allowed us to bring in many different elements and images and I’m really hopeful that it will do the work of helping take one of South Africa’s most talented artists to the world,” concludes Steytler. Produced by Picture Tree, “Holy Oxygen” was shot in an abandoned sewerage farm near Soweto, a mine dump and a forest of invasive Eucalyptus trees. Check out the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLOgRndOVnQ
