Pay it forward: Lila Tirando a Violeta on David Cronenberg

The Ireland-based Uruguyan experimental artist Lila Tirando a Violeta explains how prophetic filmmaker David Cronenberg remains a perennial influence on her.

David Cronenberg’s films have always been a huge inspiration for me, and have influenced many of the songs on my new album, Dreams of Snakes. I set out to channel the visceral sensations his films evoke in me.

Back home in Montevideo, there’s an incredible movie theatre called Cinemateca Uruguaya, home to one of the largest film archives in Latin America. It was where I saw The Fly for the first time as a teenager, which completely blew my mind. That fusion of body horror and romance, and those mind-blowing effects, lingered with me long after I left the theatre.

After seeing Crash, that was a whole different kind of shock, and it made me want to watch Cronenberg’s whole body of work. It felt so transgressive, hypnotic and unsettling in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I was familiar with JG Ballard’s writing and loved it, but seeing this adaptation was one of those moments where you realise the power of film – not just as storytelling, but as something visceral that lingers under your skin. Every time I rewatch his films, I get a glimpse of something I missed before. 

His influence isn’t just in terms of creativity, but also in how I think about technology, media, even the music industry. Videodrome is the one that left the deepest mark on me. It feels more current now than ever. It was way ahead of its time in predicting the way media would become an extension of our bodies and minds, but I think that now it’s getting so accurate it’s shocking. Screens don’t just influence us but change our perception of reality. In Videodrome, people literally develop physical mutations due to media exposure and the metaphor has become real: technology reshapes us, whether through addiction, attention span or how we construct our identities online.

On my latest album, I play around with this idea of the new flesh. Watching Videodrome now, and sampling some of its dialogue, it doesn’t feel like sci-fi any more – it feels like a warning we didn’t listen to. That unsettling, shifting energy definitely influences my music, especially in how I approach sound design and sampling techniques.