| Throughout the entire video, music by John Davis plays. The piece, "A Ladder to Space," is instrumental and features Jazz and Hip-Hop influences in repeating patterns.
This music video opens with a bright green and yellow insect, perhaps a stink bug, walking on a black keyboard. The screen splits to reveal a red refrigerator embedded in another clip of black and white starry sky. On the fridge is a sheet of paper with the word "Quarantine" and several tally marks. A light-skinned, brunette person approaches and draws another tally mark onto the paper. The screen goes black.
A person of color sits on a sofa with a laptop and puts in earbuds as the words "A Ladder to Space" appear on the screen. The typography is pixelated, reminiscent of an earlier era. A wilted bouquet of flowers, mostly red ones, floats on brackish water. The light is nearing sunset. Manhattan at twilight appears on screen, with lights from the traffic reflecting on the East River. This shot dissolves into a close-up of the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The screen goes black.
A warped shot of light-skinned hands slowly rubbing together, over and over. In the background is a wavy window, plant, and cabinet. Quick shots cut in and out, back and forth between the hands, images of face masks, including the Earth wearing a giant face mask, and a green bug. We see the Unisphere again, but from farther away and against the same starry sky footage from earlier. People are sitting and standing by the Unisphere. The video briefly cuts to the person of color seen previously with the earbuds, but now they are getting out of bed. The video continues to cut quickly between different scenes, some we've already seen and some new. Each scene has a different degree of closeness, warped-ness, and color shifts. Scenes include: scrolling past a keyboard, hands clapping, a masked Earth, pink face masks, and a close-up of the “quarantine” sign from earlier. The screen cuts to images of masks, gloved hands, and the stink bug getting edited in Photoshop. One image is messily erased to reveal the next layer underneath for a new image.
Eventually, text is brought into the Photoshop workspace. The words "Dear Aliens, I do not want to be here anymore. Please drop a ladder from space" are typed onto a messily erased image that partially reveals a laptop. The video zooms in on the text and then fades to black. A still photo of a ladder on the side of a bright white building with a tree by it is shown. Credits underneath the image read: Directed by Christine Sloan Stoddard. Music by John Davis. |
| A Ladder to Space |
| Christine Sloan Stoddard
| 2020 | Music video | 4 min. 55 sec. | Video described by artist.