Thank god for AlexandLiane, two Berlin-based video artists who repeatedly push and redefine the boundaries of creative possibility.

The pair are behind the stunning music video for Kylie Minogue’s Get Outta My Way, along with other clips for the likes of La Roux, Tiga, The Ting Tings, Sam Sparro, Mika, and the Scissor Sisters.

SameSame predicts that it’s only a matter of time before these two are asked to produce a clip for Lady Gaga (and secretly, we think that a creative collaboration of that magnitude would produce the world’s first visual orgasm), so we decided to chat to them now before they became too famous.

Hi Guys! Kylie’s Get Outta My Way music video is so good that we nearly wet our pants when we first saw it. How did the concept for the video come about?

Glad you like it! We’re always looking for new ways of working with light in our videos, so when we came across the interactive projections of Frieder Weiss two years ago and found out he lived in Berlin, we turned up on his doorstep and threatened to kill him if he didn’t work with us. We told him we’d be back with a world class pop star and that he had better be ready when we did. Kylie landed in our inbox and we felt the time was right to make it happen.

How did you guys react after getting a”You’re going to shoot Kylie’s next music video…” phone call? High fives all around or just another day at the office?

Well we knew they’d go for it because no-one had done an interactive light video before – as far as we knew. In some ways the idea was a classic Kylie video. It was on, then off and on again, due to scheduling issues (and Dannii giving birth) so there was never a point when we cracked open the Diamond White. We just totally geeked out on the technical preparations and shot list because we knew that if it didn’t work we’d all be dancing in the dark.

However, it did work and our dancers looked great and Kylie was really good fun. We knew we it was going well when we heard her squealing at the playback monitor.

And for the Kylie fanatics reading this – what was it like to collaborate with the Princess of Pop and an entourage of sexy dancers? Any goss?

Kylie really is a diamond, a total trooper and she has a wicked sense of humour too (she literally couldn’t move in the gold number, it weighed a ton). She looks great in the flesh, there is very little touch-up beauty work in the video.

Our choreographer Tony Testa has worked with Kylie before and more recently with Gaga. He created all of those great baroque-voguing tetris sequences for us. As for the sexy blonde dancers, they were all called Sven (even the girls) and were imported from the Icelandic glaciers, where they dance, tan and hunt penguins all day. So, sorry, no real gossip…oh apart from the fact that we all had a big orgy at the wrap party.

Your Luftbahn video also stopped us dead in our tracks; it was so good that we stalked your agent and got a copy to put up on our site:

For those who don’t speak German, can you first tell us what Luftbahn song is actually about?

We’re happy you like it! “Luftbahn” is a made up word which suggests an “air drift/stream” around the planet where one can float safely and observe all the problems on the Earth. It’s actually a straightforward pop song about transcending the worries of the world and being lost in the energy of love.

It’s totally fascinating that the topic of sexuality has come up the Luftbahn video and we’re really happy that you chose to feature it. We wanted to make something that reflected the ideal modern German man. We haven’t had that much feedback from the gay community but we’ve had a lot of comments about it being “gay”. Which is intriguing to us.

What was vibe like on the set between you guys and those intensely good-looking male models?

All the models are wearing wigs, so that immediately helped them to get into character. We showed them lots of fragrance commercial references, so they got the idea.
Good, professional models tend to be very straight forward to work with and these guys were no exception. Two of the men are ex Mr. Berlin and ex Mr. Germany (the two playing tug of war) and Mr. Berlin (the really big guy) is a part time gogo dancer at a club here. He blew us out of the water with his dancing, it was AMAZING.

How did they react when you said “OK, now you have to paint each other in chocolate…and then you have to skip rope in some tighty whities”?

They didn’t bat an eyelid really. You have to remember we are in Berlin, Germany. Nothing phases the Germans when it comes to sexuality and art really, straight or gay.
We were in stitches of course! Actually, Liane did a lot of the chocolate body painting.

It’s hard for us to imagine, but have you ever had a bad or unfavourable reaction to any of your projects or ideas?

People tend to be very opinionated about music videos. It’s a mainstream medium, with the possibility to push boundaries… which is kind of a contradiction in itself. We are often either accused of “being too weird” or “not going far enough”. We usually seek criticism from those we trust, we see it as a positive thing and it’s usually industry people who give useless critiques – and they should know better because they know what a struggle the process can be. It’s actually futile searching for clarity in our work because it is often about happy accidents or creating visual connections between things that were never meant to co-exist.

We’re lucky to be two people. It must be tough dealing with the knocks alone.

Are there any music videos out there that you wish you’d directed?

Nothing specific comes to mind but we know that feeling of “Damn! They beat us to it!” We have short attention spans, so we tend to not dwell on those things. We are just part of the tapestry of an evolving visual world and most of us are sucking off the same tit [the internet] so there are bound to be crossovers.

Likewise, any bands/singers who you really want to work with in the future?

Michael Jackson obviously (he will be back) and we have a few Lady Gaga ideas brewing involving surrogacy and explosions.

We’re up for working with anyone who is prepared to take things to an extreme and mix things up, whether it’s Death Metal and cake baking or Folk and robots.

Unfortunately, there aren’t really enough of those kind of artists out there. Maybe we should start a band. We could call it “Face Lift” and hide behind bandages.

You guys met at uni in the UK at the age of 16, but what’s the short story on the exact moment you met? Was it a “fireworks and an orchestra” affair or more of a “he/she was a friend of a friend” thing?

We were best friends and started snogging. We’ve only ever lived and worked together. Weird but it works, as long as we find space and time alone too.

Was your partnership always a creative collaboration from the get go?

Yes. Even if we’re not working we pretty much talk in “what if’s” all the time. Laughter is the most important thing in our relationship.

When you’ve been together with someone for so long it’s amazing to share the same visual references. We have many telepathic moments but we try not to do that finishing each others sentences thing. We could easily become a cliché.

Today your portfolio still continues to include work well outside the music video realm, including performance work, installations, to working a scene from an avant-garde opera into a video, and even a nappy commercial that you shot in the states. When you think of everything that you’ve done so far as Alexandliane, is there one project that you’re both most fond of?

The nappy commercial … obviously! Actually doing the odd money job helps open up the options and believe it or not doing something more mainstream once in a while can create a battering ram into the darker stranger parts of our creativity. Like eating bad food helps one to appreciate good food. We relish extremes and we try to make every process a pleasant one, it’s so tied up with us being a couple that we have to.

To pick one project is hard because we’re wary of being nostalgic about the past. People around us are starting to do that more and more and it’s dangerous and feels slightly over-indulgent. We should really swot up on our anecdotes for a question like this [laughs].

What’s kept you in Berlin all these years? The bratwurst, or something else?

Creative Isolation probably. economics. the nightlife. Space. safety. amazing summers and 24-hour public transport. And a fear of London!

Your videos and concepts are brilliant, outrageous, and exciting, and on the outset we’d assume that to maintain that level of creative intensity you guys would be too. Is that true? Do you have any mundane habits that you secretly love, like staying in on a Friday night?

Thank you so much for the huge compliments!

We have relatives who manage to track down these kind of interviews, so unfortunately we can’t tell you about our drug-fuelled Berlin Electro-sex lifestyle, sorry!

We like to sketch kittens and sing to trees, like the rest of the Berliners we know.

Finally, do you have a message to our creative readers out there who aspire to do what you do?

Yes. Everything is changing. Nothing is stable but it’s all exciting and there is room for everyone. Take advantage of the opportunities for self expression and always pleasure yourself before pleasing others. Oh and if it goes tits up just do it again but better!