JNN APRL
August 15, 2022
Runner Magazine is proud to host the official music video premiere of OVA, the newest single by JNN APRL. The filming took place at The Orange Room on October 21, 2021 and involved a team of Detroit locals including Zapon, Sidd Finch, Collin Preston, Patrick Ethen, Intent, Phebe Rose, Weednerdscool, and Owlmom 247. JNN is an artist and music producer currently based in Seoul, South Korea but was most recently based in Detroit City and in the years she resided here from 2015-2021, made a name for herself within the techno and electronic music scene. In 2020, JNN released her first record No Human Illegal and in 2021 started a series of collaborations including producing the track Solid State with MGUN.
Before moving to Detroit, JNN lived in Chicago, Illinois and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on painting. While living in Chicago, JNN visited Detroit often to learn about and follow the music and graffiti scene that was here at the time. “Back then, there were a few key words that were associated with Detroit, ‘techno’, ‘rave’, ‘graffiti’, ‘drugs’, ‘gambling’,’ ... these things had me drawn to the city. I visited several times and then decided to move here after 6 years in Chicago.”
Of course the pre-2014 era of Detroit was a place where artists had access to unlimited space for living, creating and partying. Despite all of the changes happening in the city in order to generate what has been referred to as “New Detroit”, there are still many remnants around from the “Old Detroit” era. The Orange Room, for instance, used to be a speakeasy located in the basement of what was Urban Bean Company and is now Spkrbox. The owners are the same, but now Spkrbox serves cocktails in addition to coffee and hosts live music sets by some of the best DJs in town on a regular basis. Anyways, just a few years ago, by invitation only, guests came to lounge at this tiny, secret orange bar by entering into a parking garage in Capital Park, walking down to the bottom floor and finding the door in the far left corner. What seemed like just a storage space was guarded by someone who checked your ID after you told them the correct password for the evening. Going in, guests were suddenly immersed in a room with plush covered walls and ceilings, a DJ in the left hand corner, a bar and a couple of booths. Now it is a proper bar accessible via the above ground establishment.
JNN and Zapon worked in collaboration to come up with a concept for the video that synced with a quote by fashion designer Alexander McQueen, “women’s sexuality is powerful”. They also had specific words in mind to guide them while planning and filming the scenes; seduction, pain, intimacy, love and fear. Zapon had been JNN APRL’s creative muse for a while and continued to function as so for this video. In addition to her center stage appearance in a majority of the clips, Zapon also worked with Owlmom 247 as the video’s art director. Interestingly, the same evening that the video was filmed, the Bottega Veneta Salon 03 Detroit runway show was happening just two blocks away in the Michigan Theater parking garage. Zapon was originally invited to be a model for this high-fashion event however due to various complications related to Covid-19, decided to skip that gig to film OVA instead.
Because of its already sexy interior, very little needed to be done to the Orange Room environment for it to function as an interesting backdrop for the video, however a few additions were made including a small lighting installation by Patrick Ethen, which shows up often as layers overlapping scenes of JNN and other scenes of Zapon. The tranc-ey quality of the track is illustrated by the editing techniques employed by JNN, which includes slowed down scenes, overlapping of clips and color alterations. These four minute and twenty-one seconds zoom into a zone that feels timeless, like a vacuum. For anyone who has been to the Orange Room, this does revive memories of spending a short evening drinking and smoking in this windowless, clockless condensed space that encourages you to slowly become more and more detached from the outside world. Experiences like this are reiterated by the smoking and drinking that is taking place in the video mixed with rotating scenes of Zapon coming in and out of darkness or JNN staring off into space wearing sunglasses donning simulated reflections of the words “I guess I will see you next lifetime”.
OVA
Song and video Produced by JNN APRL
Directed by Sidd Finch
Shot by Sidd Finch and Collin Preston
Lighting by Patrick Ethen
Wardrobe by Intent, Phebe Rose and Weednerdscool
Song and Video edited by JNN APRL
Art Directtion by Zapon and Owlmom 247
Additional editing by JY Yoon, SIdd FInch, Collin Preston
To learn more about the work of JNN APRL, you can access her website here: