MGMT have shared the new single “Nothing to Declare,” the latest from their forthcoming album Loss of Life. The duo’s fifth album is set to be released on February 23 via Mom+Pop. The song is accompanied by a music video directed by Joey Frank and starring Inga Petry, a student at the University of Pittsburgh who uses her social media platform to spread awareness for the disabled community. In the video, the camera follows Petry, who was born with upper limb aplasia, as she makes her way through Paris.
Director Joey Frank discovered Petry through her TikTok, on which she shares with others the way she lives her life, highlighting the intention of learning from each others’ differences. “When I first saw Inga on TikTok, I imagined her as the star of a foreign film,” Frank shared. “A certain brand of 1990’s European independent cinema typified by the Dardenne brothers always essentially follows a human navigating through life. Inga has been armless all her life, which lends a different kind of vulnerability to the simple narrative of a self possessed young woman traveling from Pittsburgh to Paris. In real life, Inga puts herself online in a very candid way on TikTok, but the ‘Nothing to Declare’ MGMT music video plays on the aesthetics of independent cinema to allow the audience a different sort of emotional fictive space with Inga as ingenue.”
Petry added, “Having grown up with no arms, I have been watched my whole life. In some respects, the Venus de Milo has always felt analogous to my life, and specifically to the character I portray in this film. She’s adored, respected, and almost constantly surrounded by people, and yet she stands alone and her past is unknown. There have always been questions surrounding her arms and she has never had to answer or prove her worth. From my perspective, she has nothing to declare. Playing this character that is different, and not just because she doesn’t have arms, but by the way she handles the difference and still feeds on new curiosity was a really beautiful experience.”
Check out the moving video below and pre-order Loss of Life here.
