36 hours of Harmony Korine

In the 1990s, director, photographer, and writer Harmony Korine made his name and reputation with films like Kids (1995) and Gummo (1997),  focusing on the degenerate and deranged. In 2012 he went mainstream with Spring Breakers, starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson in a teen vacation that turns ultraviolent. His latest movie, AGGRO DR1FT, puts him firmly back in the category of cult director.

AGGRO DR1FT follows a hitman (Jordi Mollà) as he prepares to wipe out a demonic crime lord (Travis Scott). But don’t worry about the story – let it wash over you like the liquid, psychedelic vision of its infra-red thermal cameras and CGI and AI-enhanced scenes and the synth soundtrack by AraabMuzik – what matters is the vibe. Think of AGGRO DR1FT as a movie made entirely of loading screens and cutscenes. Grand Theft Auto meets Palme d’Or.

The movie premiered last year at the Venice International Film Festival. Back in February it screened at the Crazy Girls strip club in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Now, Korine, his team at creative studio EDGLRD, and the movie are on a “world tour” that kicked off in Brooklyn and is heading to Tokyo. Last week was the London leg. Korine hosted screenings at the Prince Charles Cinema, his paintings and a talk at Hauser & Wirth, and a special screening and VIP afterparty at EartH Hackney. Plaster’s Finn Constantine and Jacob Wilson, and artist James Jessiman, joined to see what went down over 36 hours.

Thursday evening, Hauser & Wirth

Harmony Korine tells Hans Ulrich Obrist and the crowd gathered at Hauser & Wirth that he wants to push through logic and film and see what’s on the other side. Film is dead. In fact, he doesn’t even like saying the word “film,” he prefers “movies,” but in his studio they’ve started calling his short-form videos “blinx.”

Korine says that he has no attention span. He’s sick of long movies. He says that he sometimes sees 30-second clips that he thinks are better than every film he’s ever made. He studies them for hours. He wants to make short clips that could be screened infinitely, randomly and still make sense. He says again that he has no attention span.

He says he knew the infra-red, CGI, AI-filtered AGGRO DR1FT would be provocative, that you’d have to retrain your eyes, and that for him it was just beautiful. He compares the colour palette to that of John McCracken. He likes Martin Kippenberger and William Eggleston’s work. He grew up near Eggleston and did a road trip with him through Memphis. “it was pretty wild.”

Korine says that time doesn’t exist any more, in a conventional sense. It’s all one moment. He’s convinced the world isn’t real. He’s taken up fishing just to touch the fish, to remind himself that the world is real. Sometimes he just stares at the water. He grounds himself by painting. At the end of the day, he crosses the road from his creative studio to his painting studio and works all night. This is his time and his space.

30 minutes in and it’s clear he’s tapped out. I’m surprised he lasted this long. His answers are shorter and his jokes are cruder. Obrist just carries on, he doesn’t accept Korine’s one-word answers and keeps pushing. Obrist says “just one more question,” around six times. Korine only perks up when Obrist talks about gaming and when he mentions tomorrow night’s screening and party. Korine says we should all join him tomorrow and starts rapping: “Percocets, Molly, Percocets.”

The talk ends. Korine just stands there chatting with fans and posing for pics and after some time I join the queue to get a quote or two. I’m right in front of Korine when James Franco turns up and slaps him on the back. It’s my turn now and I can see in Korine’s eyes that he just wants to hang with Franco, and I don’t blame him. I try to break the ice but he doesn’t crack. After a few yeahs and nos I leave him to it. 60 seconds with Harmony Korine. It’s over in a blink. – Jacob Wilson

Friday night, EartH Hackney

Going to a Harmony Korine screening is like walking into a different universe. Do I act like I’m at an art show? Or is this a party and I’m going to get fucked up? Or am I sitting and watching respectfully like I’m at Cannes? My mind is boggled. The crowd is as you would imagine: the cool and the cooler. I spot Juergen Teller, Ben Ditto and a whole heap of cats far too trendy for the likes of me – London has turned up for what Harmony has to offer. One could liken the screening to a strange cultist Sunday service. The crowd bathed in red haze, lasers reaching outwards them, bass shaking us like the power of Christ. An hour and a half of this and it’s over. As one friend put it- “the film is the opposite of cosy” – but it’s not meant to be cosy, nor is it meant to be anything….I think?

For me, the film is what it is; you take from it what you want. Groups of guys a little younger than me get up as soon as it finishes and start quoting and acting out the film they’ve just watched. I’m not convinced I processed one line of dialogue. But this is the power of Harmony, this is his cultural cache. He has “youth culture” in a vice grip and for good reason. Find me another artist-filmmaker-photographer-painter-sculptor-commercial director-producer (the list goes on) who is putting on haze-filled, laser-framed film premiers followed by DJ sets from the likes of Arca. And I think this is my point: whatever the work is, or your thoughts on the film, what Harmony Korine has always done is galvanise people. And that is as important as any “art”. And one thing’s for sure: he doesn’t care what I think. – Finn Constantine

Saturday morning, EartH Hackney

This is proof that things get mixed up. Back in Miami. Eat me up and spit me out. A toddler’s first words on repeat, again. Sleep hasn’t happened yet – get out of your head and into somebody else’s. You wander around the Cuban district suburbs at night and look through the windows of single-story homes flanked by palm trees for comfort. There’s a view of a good father putting his kids to bed. It’s Bo, (the lead role in AGGRO DR1FT). A warm, wholesome scene.

He kisses them both on the forehead and turns off the light. Devotion drips from his wife onto the bed sheets, she’s writhing around in the bedroom next door. Validation, served in the warm hold of familial comfort. He must leave them now because he’s a hitman at night. This life is everything to him, but it’s not what he needs. The engine’s still running outside.

The bounty waits for Bo (Jordi Mollà) on the borders – “my dream, my secret place where I can live.” I am a solitary hero. We’ve met him before. The hustler at the bar in Chiba City, the undercover cop making friends with his new addiction. Perhaps to be an assassin is like using – “It’s not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car” – (Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly [Authors note] 1977)

Korine doesn’t speak much about politics, or war for that matter. He doesn’t need to. It’s all here. Children with dead faces rising from the graves. A video game leaked before its release date. You torrented Gummo in your youth. Now you’re here downloading a cracked copy of the world on dial-up. It’s corrupted. Violence and horror play out through decapitation cutscenes. (They were always my favourite bits. I never skipped them).

A loading screen. Bo and his apprentice, Zion (Travis Scott) jostle together, an army of killers speeding to the next dispatch on a motor-driven dingy. Heavy Florida heat. If it weren’t such a laughable idea, one of them might read a book to pass the time for the devil. What would it be? A beaten-up copy of Heart of Darkness.

“We live as we dream – alone” – (Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness)

In my dreams, there is a car.

It wakes me every morning at 4 am when it drives by. It’s there when I leave the house too, waiting for me around every corner. Sometimes I get close enough to touch it. Run my fingers along the raised text on the door panels. A vehicle for love, a vehicle for death. I never see the driver.

The same dream plays out here tonight, except it’s not my dream anymore. It’s an auditorium filled with people and lasers, everybody jacked in. Theatre, filled with exhaust fumes of hell and longing. Korine. Audience. Father. The twisted feeling of affliction never leaves. Little angels asleep at home, but daddy has to work.

“All we need is the love for our children. No resentment. No hate.

Just true love.

Love is God and God is Love.

Take away the pain.

Forever.” – James Jessiman