Corbijn Sessions x Strage 03
The third and final themed evening about Anton Corbijn focuses on music videos. Fredrik Strage talks with director (and Kent collaborator) Adam Berg.
About the evening
As Kent’s longtime filmmaker, Adam Berg has meant as much to them as Corbijn has to Depeche Mode. This past winter, he mesmerized the audience at Dublin’s 3Arena with his stage projections. He has also directed videos for The Cardigans, Death in Vegas, A-ha, Groove Armada and Yvonne – as well as the dystopian action film Black Crab.
Now Adam Berg comes to Fotografiska to join music journalist Fredrik Strage in a conversation about Corbijn’s impact on music videos. Together they will share their favorite works from his production and discuss the state of the music video in 2025. Is it fading away as record label PR budgets shrink, or should we view every TikTok clip as a kind of music video?
Background
Anton Corbijn was already an established rock photographer when, in 1983, he directed the video for German new wave band Palais Schaumburg’s track Hockey. He went on to create videos for artists such as Echo & The Bunnymen, Propaganda, and David Sylvian. With a distinctive and daring visual style, he transformed the music video from commercial into art form. He paved the way for directors like Chris Cunningham, Stéphane Sednaoui, Michel Gondry, Jonas Åkerlund, and Johan Renck. Anyone who watched MTV in the 1990s remembers Dave Gahan wandering the Alps with a crown and deck chair in Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence, U2’s cross-dressing in One, or the anorexic Santa being crucified in Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box.