Bianca Scout – Vanguard

On ‘Vanguard,’ multidisciplinary performer Bianca Scout channels the spirits of her “goth opera,” The Heart of the Anchoress, in a visual that shape-shifts between folk horror and documentary, directed by Elena Isolini. Blurring ballet dance into ecstatic rituals of supplication, Scout flashes through a choreography of possession, contorting the definition of the track’s title, ‘the forefront or action of a movement,’ into a primal physical language. “I’m weaponising my own body, seeing myself as a chamber, of secrets, layers, fortress, manipulated structures,” writes Scout in a text accompanying the film. “Like the religious map / wrap themselves in, to confinement. To break inside, upside down, other land, new territory, thinking about this land and hierarchy and the structures shifting in and outside of us.” “The video concept revolves around a spirit who is learning how to haunt,” explains director Elena Isolini. “I’ve always been drawn to split universes, this idea that there are two co-existing v