CINEMATOGRAPHER
Anthonie Tonnon
An immersive ode to cinema, turn of the millennium dance culture, and The Situationist International
Cinematographer is a new show by Taite Music Prize-winning songwriter and performer Anthonie Tonnon. Celebrating the inspiration of cinema to modern Aotearoa, Cinematographer combines all new music with visual DJing by Erica Sklenars, custom videography by Theo Taylor, archival footage, and a psychogeographic narrative.
The show explores two timelines – the film-obsessed Situationist International and their revolutionary experiments which nearly overthrew France in 1968, and the turn of the new millennium in Aotearoa, as our islands transformed into to what Guy Debord famously called ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ – a country of filmmakers and film locations, DJs, celebrity culture, and the greatest marketing minds in the anglophone world.
Tonnon draws a link between these seemingly distant stories, swapping his guitar for the vocoder, and converting his two Synthstrom Deluges into honorary turntables, to create a cinematic live documentary with a sonic palette inspired by turn-of-the-millennium dance culture.
“Tonnon’s gift is the astute juxtaposition of the personal and the political, where social issues revolve around people up against family, lovers, corporate entities or bureaucracy. But at heart, love is the pivot.” The Listener
Image credit: Belinda Merrie & Daniel Alexander
Written and performed – Anthonie Tonnon
Visual DJing – Erica Sklenars
Cinematography – Theo Taylor
Design – Daniel Alexander
Sound – Malcolm Ibell
Lighting – Wendy Clease
Anthonie Tonnon
Few songwriters forge the kinds of paths that Anthonie Tonnon has. Experiments with synthesizers and sampling may change his sonic palette, but a constant is his lyric-writing and shows that are creative works in themselves.
Tonnon finds character-driven stories in existential subjects: evolution and the future of work in Two Free Hands, or Machiavellian local government politics in Water Underground.
Winning the Taite Music Prize for his last album, Leave Love Out Of This, Tonnon is returning with new music and a new show, titled Cinematographer in 2025.
Erica Sklenars
Erica Sklenars is a Pōneke based artist and designer, working across the fields of mixed reality, video art, installation, performance and intervention. Her practice is often collaborative, and explores modes of communication between people and social groups, pop culture, underground cultures, as well as DIY adaptation or hacking of technology.
Often using humor, Erica’s work subverts and contentedly inhabits personal human failures, and plays with future dystopian themes evident in current day life.
Erica is currently a PHD student at COCA Massey, researching questions related to perception within extended reality technologies.
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