BTS’ “Black Swan” Art Film Is Nuts

The galactically popular South Korean boy band BTS have a new album called Map Of The Soul: 7 coming out next month, and they’ve got some strange ways promoting it. For instance: There’s CONNECT, BTS, a global art project in which 22 different artists, in five cities around the world, are all unveiling new works that are somehow BTS-related. And today, BTS have unveiled the video for first single “Black Swan.” But it’s not a video. It’s an “art film.”

It seems wildly, almost baffling pretentious for an ultra-popular boy band to be referring to their new music video as an art film, especially while implicitly referencing the 2010 Darren Aronsky movie. (I hope they do mother! next.) but after watching that “art film,” it kind fits! I don’t know what else you’d call it!

The members BTS don’t appear in director YongSeok Choi’s “Black Swan” clip. Instead, the video, set to an orchestral remix an otherwise pretty normal R&B-influenced K-pop track, is a dance performance from the Slovenian troupe MN Dance Company. The members the Company expressively bend their bodies through a cavernous structure that appears to be a shopping mall that was abandoned after being halfway built. I don’t really know what any it means. But I do know that the Backstreet Boys would never unveil a new single modern-dance performance, and I respect the insanity. Watch it below.

Map Of The Soul: 7 is out 2/21 on BigHit Entertainment.