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Anna Leszkiewicz is a pop culture critic for the New Statesman. Based in London, she graduated from Oxford University in 2014, and has also written for the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Independent.

“Architecture in Motion: Brutalism in Music Videos”
Brutalist estates are some of the most contested sites in Britain. Aesthetically and politically divisive, are they a towering monument to progressive social ideals, or an ugly, dehumanized concrete jungle? Perhaps none are as contentious as the Barbican—London’s iconic housing estate and cultural centre.

I’d like to explore the Barbican’s role in pop videos, looking closely at recent British examples, like Metronomy’s “Month of Sundays”, Sketpa’s “Shutdown” and Dua Lipa’s “Blow Your Mind”. I’m particularly interested in the ways these videos perform the political and cultural connotations of the complex through movement.

Metronomy’s “Month of Sundays” explores the jagged spirals of the Barbican Complex with dizzying camerawork, including shots from a great height looking down, and swirling shots of the clouds above. Modernist architecture imagined “streets in the sky” with “pedestrians removed from streetscapes, and housing and commerce subjected to the strictest separations of functions” (Spiro Kostof). A suspended utopia isolated from the effects of capitalism: the architectural version of the impossible “month of Sundays” lyrically explored in the song.

Conversely, in Dua Lipa’s “Blow Your Mind,” there is a less fluid approach to movement. Individual shots are more posed, stiff, and icy. The video borrows the visual language of fashion editorials, adverts and even runway shows (like Chanel SS15), bringing capitalism into the space with a jolt. Simultaneously, the (only superficially rebellious) cool girl gang narrative introduces ideas of exclusivity that reflect the Barbican Centre’s cultural associations with the metropolitan elite.

Skepta brings a more organic style of movement into the space. “Shutdown” is lyrically preoccupied with challenging assumptions about what kind of bodies are allowed in which spaces—here it feels like Skepta is intentionally playing with the Barbican’s dual status as once socially progressive estate and current centre of white, middle-class exclusivity.