Taken from the July issue of Dazed & Confused:

Mykki Blanco: “Mitch Moore created my first music video, ‘Join My Militia’, on a shoestring budget. He’s attuned, thorough and sure of his own creativity, but also willing to take risks. He can understand the aesthetic of the artist he’s working with and then polish, push and tweak it to the next level.”

“I want my work to transport people to unique worlds with no rules. I want everything I do to feel iconic, never disposable or derivative,” says 22-year-old filmmaker Mitch Moore, who is on his way to accomplishing his goals thanks to videos for artists like SSION and Mykki Blanco.
 
He was born and raised on a pig farm in the Ozark mountains, but came to New York University to study film. 
He credits this isolated upbringing with influencing his artistic narrative. “I think I learned to be a world-maker on the farm,” he says, “because I hit puberty and came into who I am in that place. I also spent a lot of time by myself, because I was 20 miles away from any of my schoolfriends.”

Moore spent much of his youth looking out of the car window, listening to music and forming his visual imagination. “I remember when we got broadband I spent hours watching music videos and feeling really transported. The internet is broadening the contexts for how a message, idea, or story can be told. Irony, mumblecore and nostalgia are dead. Works that aim to hit the soul are going to be majorly important.”
 
His videos for SSION’s “LuvvBazaar” (co-directed with Cody Critcheloe), an exuberant party scene spliced between bubblegum-chewing adolescents and a drugstore dance solo, and Mykki Blanco’s “Join My Militia”, a dark, writhing performance in a forest, helped define both artists. Alternately, videos like “Stitches” for rising fashion label Hood by Air, “DLIHCYOB” for LA’s MOCAtv and “M1NDFUCK” for Ian Isiah (all of which star performance artist boychild) have helped him to create potent atmospheres of disorientating pleasure. Moore also art-directed Jesse Miller-Gordon’s steamy video for Le1f’s “Spa Day”, which features the NY rapper and his mates Junglepussy, Heems and Lakutis unwinding in a Brooklyn spa among tropical foliage and fruity cocktails. “With each video, I try to elevate the mythology of the music and the performer,” he says. 
“I just want to continue making really strong works that push me and strike people in some way.”

Photography by Josh McNey