"Spectacular" by Pau Albà
"Best Music Video"
‘The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.’
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle.
The technical reproduction of images inaugurates an era in which the available views of the world and of history become a spectacle to be contemplated from distant places and times. The tour of France, an iconic competition of cycling, is one of the most popular sporting events ever. Tanoca’s music video recreates the spectacularity of the 1953 tour of France by making an animated piece that combines footage of the event with the song ‘Espectacular’ by Joan Colomo (Disc Trist, B-Core disc, 2021), creating a piece that brings cyclists to an abstracted France. The music video has been created by using artisanal techniques, such as photocopying, painting, watercoloring, cutting, scanning and digitally editing stills.
The original footage comes from the film Tour de France 1953 (Haghefilm, 1953), provided by the Eye Filmmuseum of Netherlands, a collaborator of this project. The film, considered the first Dutch sports documentary film, documents the first tour that was won by Louison Bobet, and the first of his consecutive three victories in the competition.
The images recall the dispute between Bartali, Loroño, Bobet, Wagtmans, Robic, Schär and others, together with the appearance of the press, the mechanics, the public or the music in sporting events. The overall result looks back into a time in which sport was experienced in a more spontaneous way. This epic allows Tanoca to pay tribute to these years and to escape from the contemporary professionalisation of cycling -and of filmmaking.