This Too Shall Pass Away

Directed by C. Spencer Yeh

Referencing gaming culture in form and content as both an aesthetic device and point of nostalgia, Yeh's video for the band Xiu Xiu's "This Too Shall Pass (For Freddy)" portrays young twentysomething life in the style of overhead "dungeon crawler" video games. The digital sprites flutter throughout each other's daily lives and dramas in a manner that evokes a cross between The Legend of Zelda and MTV's The Real World. At night the characters escape into digital dreams that eventually collide, via partying, into a surrealistic, psychedelic episode blurring the line between reality and oblivion.