Directed by QUALIATIK and Kathleen Dycaico, “Mother Tongue” is the official music video for the first single off QUALIATIK’s debut EP, Discarnate. The video depicts the QUALIATIK origin story, in which the lines are blurred between metaphysical and physical reality as the artist submits to the psychic forces that tendril out through her art.

Autobiographical in nature, “Mother Tongue” documents a hallucinatory experience QUALIATIK had while making the record, which disintegrated the substance of her reality and crystallized a metamorphic paradigm shift. Created in the course of two weeks on a shoestring budget, this project represents a true coming-together of a community that has formed around a shared passion for emotional vulnerability and visceral, otherworldly form.

An expansion of the gentle and outlandish queer community that has sprung up around UNSEELIE, the fantasy-fueled NYC collective of which QUALIATIK is a founder, the co-directors called upon a team of 25+ artist friends, who came together as a labor love to breathe life into to this vision.
“Mother Tongue” illustrates a true experience in which inexplicable, alien-like creatures drawn by the artist in a sleep deprived and isolation-induced trance state gain substance as she pours her life force into them. Known as Anima, these entities take form as QUALIATIK progressively opens herself to the realm of the subconscious. The Anima begin to seep into in the physical world, and eventually, all three characters dissolve in an ouroboros of mutual consumption. Finally, she submits herself to the energy of the psychic forms, embodying both omnipotence and complete submission, as she devotes herself as a bridge between the material and the immaterial.

The co-directors developed a multi-faceted creative dynamic built upon both of their strengths, centered around QUALIATIK’s razor-sharp visual divination and Dycaico’s sensibility toward fine details in movement and expression. Dycaiaco pushed QUALIATIK to convey the experience with the utmost candor, and QUALIATIK devoted herself relentlessly to the execution of minutia, spending months editing, coloring, and compositing the video. The pair were deeply involved in the execution of every aspect of the project and the jaw-dropping production value is due to their unique work ethic and creative bond, as well as the sheer force of talent in the rhizomatic web of artists who brought “Mother Tongue” to life.

QUALIATIK is a multimedia artist, producer, performer, and engineer traversing the threshold between science, psychology, and metaphysics. Her feverishly introspective music envelopes the listener in dynamic emotional landscapes that pull a thread from the subconscious and unravel the folds of one’s internal world with a gentle vulnerability.

Informed by an academic background in neuroscience and a preoccupation with technology’s role in the evolution of the human brain, QUALIATIK’s work has a distinct transhumanist edge, with an empathic impulse that frames her inquiry as an incisive exploration of the human subconscious. “Ethereal, restless, and bursting with life,” QUALIATIK’s work draws a sharp arrow inward, following its path toward the depths of the psyche.

QUALIATIK’s passionately DIY, autodidactic approach finds her conceptualizing, creating, and executing every aspect of her work with an endless thirst for expression through new forms of media. This includes 3D visual accompaniment for her live show, virtual and augmented reality experiences, interactive computer programs, tattoos, and detailed, elegiac pen drawings that allude to the fervently subconscious nature of her work.

QUALIATIK’s debut EP, Discarnate, a seven-track enfleshment of the noncorporeal self, is due out May 31st, 2019 on her own label, Psychoid Devices. Discarnate will be accompanied by an ambitious music video for the record’s single, “Mother Tongue” and a lengthy European tour on the heels of the release.

Credits

Director: QUALIATIK & Kathleen Dycaico

Producer: Kathleen Dycaico

Co-Producer: Adrian Martens

Visual Concept & Character Design: QUALIATIK

Talent: Brooks Ginnan & Tomasyn Hayes

Director of Photography: Stivan Widick

2nd Camera: Jacob Stone

1st AC: Zachary Tidmore

2nd AC: Dante Capone

Gaffer: Jane Angmar

Lighting Assist: Perri Mackenzie

Rigging: Taryn Blake Miller

Production Design: Kit Sheridan

Art Department: Anna Sagatov, Steven Killian

Suspension: Daniel Hopkins

Prosthetics: Izzi Galindo, Caroline Mills, Griffin Hall

MUA: Toshi Salvino

MUA Assist: Veli Sadiku

Nails: Juan Alvear

Styling: Griffin Hall

VFX: Zanzie Addington-White

VFX Assist: Travis Buechner

CGI: Radimir Koch

Editor: Jacob Stone & QUALIATIK

Colorist: QUALIATIK

BTS Photographer: Jeremy Caldwell

Additional thanks: Ada Banks, Crow Vendetta, Sarah Kinlaw, Brian Seneca, Zari Stevens, Shaw Walters