Chad VanGaalen - Host Body

What this video is

Released in early 2018, 'Host Body' arrives in a cultural moment of intensifying anxiety around social media, smartphone addiction, and the blurring of physical and augmented reality. VanGaalen's thematic framing — beings warped by their self-perception through digital devices, a 'parasitic demon' of augmented reality worship — resonates with broader post-internet skepticism circulating in indie and alternative…

Why it matters

A landmark example of the auteur-animated indie music video tradition, 'Host Body' demonstrates how a single musician-animator can produce a visually complex, thematically rich video entirely within a DIY home-studio context. It advances VanGaalen's long-running practice of hand-drawn surrealist…

The director

Chad VanGaalen (born 1977) is a Canadian musician, animator, visual artist, and instrument builder from Calgary, Alberta. He is renowned for his DIY indie rock style and self-animated music videos. He has released albums on Sub Pop and Flemish Eye Records…