Synopsis
"Agen" unfolds as a rapid, non-linear collage of images, patterns, textures, and visual fragments. Manmade and natural forms, old and new artifacts, religious symbols, cartoons, waves, and paintings appear in restless succession, creating links between things that seem unrelated. Rather than telling a conventional story, the video moves like a fever dream or an associative stream of consciousness. Its shifting imagery mirrors the dense, skittering electronic track while inviting viewers to find their own connections between the past, present, and imagined future.
Factoids & Trivia
- The video was described as an exercise in "typology," using visual classification as a way to place radically different images into unexpected relationships.
- Its imagery was assembled from hundreds of pictures found through random Internet searches. The process was intended to produce a constantly shifting, fever-dream-like flow rather than a linear narrative.
- The visual concept reflects the broader aesthetic of *ESTOILE NAIANT*, patten's 2014 Warp Records album. "Agen" is the record's ninth track.
- In an interview, patten connected the video's imagery with recurring visual patterns across time, including natural and manmade objects, ancient and modern artifacts, and religious and secular imagery.
- patten has deliberately avoided explaining the meaning of the title "Agen," preferring to leave the track and its imagery open to individual interpretation.
- The video emerged from an ongoing exchange between the music and visual work, rather than from a straightforward process of sending a completed track to someone else for illustration.