PREMIÈRE: Nina Miranda Goes Guerrilla Filming in London in ‘The Cage & The Garden’ Video

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‘Freedom of Movement’ may well be the name of Nina Miranda‘s debut album but it also serves as the perfect summation of her latest video for “The Cage & The Garden.” With the streets of London as their playground, Miranda and a team of musicians and friends headed out one morning with the prime aim of trying to create a schism in what can be the claustrophobic world of any capital city, breaking the monotony of routine and polluted environs with a loosening of inhibitions and a performance of pure exhilaration. With Miranda the focus, wearing a Alexander McQueen bodysuit and specially-designed cage helmet, she shows no fear in confronting the normality of London, threatening spaces both personal and public as her body loses any sense of confinement.

“The Cage” and “The Garden” are two tracks – combined for this video – that were written by Nina and recorded with Brazilian musicians Kassin and Domenico Lancellotti. They feature on her album Freedom of Movement. The tracks were also recently remixed and released on the The Cage Remixes EP.

Here’s Nina to tell the story of the video:

“I love working in collaboration, and videos are a chance to get all the art forms conversing. This was a dream team. It was what we called ‘guerilla filming’ as me and a ‘vibe-tribe’ of mainly Brazilian friends descended on the City of London during rush hour. We worked together on adrenaline, instinct and ‘jogo de cintura’ (game of waist). There were many creative discussions prior to filming but on the day we just went for it, no rehearsals, just a loose timeline and plenty of costumes.

Everyone bar the camera man, stylist and make-up artist stayed at the director, Tiago di Mauro’s, flat the night before. None of them went to sleep and were chatting and giggling until 5.30am and we were up at 7am.

Radek Anais Laró, the Polish fashion designer, stylist and sculptor, designed and made the cage, and got together all of the costumes. My bodysuit is an original Alexander McQueen prototype lent to me by Radek who’d worked with McQueen on it. As soon as I put it on I felt like something else, I had become sea or sky. The cage had the same transformative effect, I could hide in it.. so in the end it set me free. When I went out in the streets I felt like I could do anything, I was almost invisible… I channelled all my mixed emotions about living and co-existing in this great big Capital City that I’ve never quite got used to. Things that I want to embrace and things that I want to escape from… This song is about channelling everyone’s mixed feelings at once… and trying to find a release for them… I believe we managed to do that together.”

Further Reading: Pinching The People: An Interview With Nina Miranda

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