The Artist

The Artist is the centre of the entire system. Their death is what brings everyone into the room, but their presence never really disappears. The relationships, the release, the apartment, and the music all exist around them.

They do not need to explain themselves through dialogue. The audience should understand why people built their identities and relationships around them simply through their presence, image, music, and the world they created around themselves.

We are looking for a real musician with a distinctive physical and visual presence. Not necessarily conventionally attractive, polished, or celebrity-like. What matters is individuality — a face, silhouette, style, and energy that remain interesting even in complete stillness.

The Artist spends a large part of the film as a body in the room, so their presence has to survive without movement or dialogue. They should feel like someone who already carries a private mythology around them — someone whose clothes, objects, records, equipment, apartment, and unfinished work can immediately tell us something about who they are.

We are looking for an independent artist with a clear musical identity. Ideally a solo musician or clearly defined front person working around electronic music, ambient, experimental sound, leftfield music, or related forms.

The artist should already have an existing body of work and a strong relationship with live performance. A multi-instrumentalist or someone capable of building a flexible live set is strongly preferred.

Popularity is secondary. What matters is authorship — we need someone whose music already feels like it comes from a specific world.

This is not a traditional acting role. We are not looking for an actor pretending to be a musician. We are looking for a musician whose real presence can become part of the fiction.

The role requires physical precision, trust, and comfort with being filmed very closely. Because the character is dead for much of the film, small physical details become important: posture, weight, stillness, breathing control during takes, and the way the body occupies the room.

The Artist has to remain psychologically present even when physically inactive. The audience should continue to feel that everyone in the apartment is still reacting to them.

The artist will not simply compose a soundtrack for a finished film. The music and the story will be developed together. Tracks can influence the rhythm, structure, and emotional direction of scenes, while the film can influence the development of the album in return.

Together, we will build a fictional version of the artist, their visual identity, album, and the musical world surrounding the film.

We need someone who wants to enter the project as a creator, not as a service provider.

The collaboration continues through development, production, release, festival screenings, and live performance.

The artist must be open to creating new material specifically for the project, appearing in the film, developing the album alongside the screenplay, and eventually performing the music live during screenings.

The finished project will also continue as a touring live-cinema performance, so the artist needs to be interested in building a live set that can exist in direct dialogue with the film.