Andrew Gibbs

        While the rest of his work that I could find online seems less finished/realized than his video Florian (to CocoRosie's Houses off of 2007's The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn), I think it is absolutely worth posting this one piece by animator Andrew Gibbs.
        The video initially grabbed me with its style and because it appears to have been made using a technique that I'm currently learning, but as I watched I became more impressed with the seamless way the audio and video have been integrated. I would venture to say that if I were not so familiar with CocoRosie's music that I would have been unsure which came first, the animation or the sounds. He also effectively draws attention to some of the subtler/more unusual sounds within CocoRosie's compositions by giving them a visual cue, which made me really appreciate the way they were playing off one another, rather than only giving the song a storyline.
        It is also full of really beautifully strange moments (when the soldier uses thread from his coat to try and save a drowning woman, waves being represented as small hands, the way the beginning is tied back in at the very end). Definitely worth a watch.

Florian on youtube
Gibbs' Vimeo



images: screen grabs from Florian

Nathalie Djurberg

Nathalie Djurberg 1978-

        I was attempting to organize my studio today, and found a section of a magazine page (I can't even tell what magazine it's from) that a little sleuthing revealed I had ripped out in 2008. It was a brief review of Nathalie Djurberg's show Turn into Me, which was at the Fondazione Prada April-June 2008. The short paragraph was accompanied by the second photograph I've posted here (which is from her animation We Are Not Two, We Are One), which of course caught my attention.
        While I love her work as a whole, I'm going to focus less on the content of her animations (which are wildly graphic, both sexually and violence-wise, so if you decide to watch one you've been warned) because it is less of an interest to me than the manner in which she presents the videos. I will say regarding the content that it was in many ways refreshing to see someone (particularly a young attractive female) tackling such rough (and surrealist) topics that especially in today's culture are being closeted away. The animations are no doubt offensive, but it's certainly no accident.
        As I mentioned, what really most interests me about her work is the presentation, which from what I've been able to gather, typically culminates in a really cohesive environmental installation. Too often in galleries and museums I find myself peering into a dark room, watching a few seconds of a video or film, and ducking out. I feel like many people do not even go that far and simply write off the small rooms. This is not to suggest that video/animation/film can not exist effectively on its own, because it obviously does and that would be an absurd statement, but in terms of the gallery/museum setting, I think her method is a million times more engaging, particularly for the kinds of animations she's making. You literally enter into her strange world. Without them the animations are still interesting, both visually and conceptually, but something is almost left to be desired, and the environments really seem to make everything come together and complete.
        The bizarre environments (large butts rising out of the floor, strange caves, mazes of giant otherworldy flowers) are accompanied by the audio of her animations, which is always done by Hans Berg. The unease and eeriness of the music really completes the atmosphere (at least, as from what I can gather and have seen online, not having been able to see her work in person myself).
        There's a really nice blog post on her work itself here, which is definitely worth checking out if you're even minutely interested.


(I couldn't direct link this first link so: select "exhibitions", then "exhibition archive", "2008" and "Nathalie Djurberg")
-Interactive map of Turn into Me at the Fondazione Prada with really cool panoramic views (click the circular arrows then hold down the mouse to move around, and I'd recommend the full screen. Why doesn't every gallery have this feature?!)
-Press release for Turn into Me at the Fondazione Prada
-Walkthrough of Experiment at the 2009 Venice Biennale




images: various sources; 1&4 are of Turn into Me, and 3 is of Experiment

2009 wrap-up

        In case you haven't been following my every move this year, here are my top ten favorite discoveries (all are artists that I had not known of before this year, since I sometimes write about long-time influences of mine):

April 18th : Bianca Casady (knew of her before 2009, but not her artwork)
April 29th : Jan Švankmajer
June 5th : Nadine Byrne
June 7th : Miwa Yanagi
July 24th : Compagnia della Fortezza
July 29th : Andrea Marshall
August 12th : Ali Scarpulla
September 23rd : Bert & Bertie
October 9th : Susanna Majuri
December 21st : Miru Kim




        I realize that the majority of this list is women, and while this did not surprise me (I tend to seek out female artists), I was slightly surprised after a bit of investigation, that the reasoning for this is also partially that the male artists that I've written about this past year are almost entirely artists I had prior knowledge of (and therefor did not include). This coming year I'll try to find some guys who are new to me.

images (top to bottom): Miwa Yanagi, Bert & Bertie, Andrea Marshall & Susanna Majuri

Fantastic Mr. Fox

        Tonight I finally got a chance to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I was extremely excited to see, because from the previews the animation looked BEAUTIFUL. And I have to say, it actually exceeded my expectations! Not only was the animation possibly the most well executed that I've seen (and this is saying quite a lot as someone whose favorite form of film is animations), but there are some really beautiful shots (something which is not made evident in the trailer).
        Although the storyline is just barely reminiscent of Dahl's version, the spirit of the book is upheld. The casting was perfect, and the soundtrack (which is comprised largely of banjo) is really fun and fits perfectly.
        All I can really say about the film is that it all came together really well, and I was smiling through literally the entire thing. They have created a perfect balance of something that is easy and fun to watch, and at the same time visually stunning, which I think is really lacking in film right now (but also optimistically on the rise).

I couldn't really find any screenshots that show the feel of the film (and as I stated while the trailer is really good, it does not accurately show just how good the film is), so here's a little taste, but this is one of the few films this year that I truly believe is worth the $10+ to see in theaters, I intend to see it again.

trailer


(director/producer/writer Wes Anderson with a bunch of the stop-motion figures)

Reed + Rader

Back to normal posting from my 2 week hiatus! Midterms are over and I am ready to go.

        And of course I am back with something bizarre and fascinating. I usually try not to post more than four images, but since these were just so amazing, and because I've been gone for two weeks, I possibly went a little overboard. But I'm not apologizing, because as I said, the images are amazing.
        Reed + Rader is made up of fashion (photography/ video/ installation/ graphics) duo Pamela Reed and Matther Rader. What initially attracted me to their work was the strange feel and unconventional look. Two minutes into their website I was hooked.
        I can not tell you much about the artists themselves, other than that they are 26 and live in New York. Their website also states that they "enjoy cats, stuffed animals, nintendo, pizza, robots, deli sandwiches and computing on the internet". I imagine that they are fun to be around. What I can speak to is their work.
        While all of their work is very different, it is all distinctively theirs. Looking through their website, I began to notice that images were moving (a startling discovery at first), sometimes animated very subtly (a blink or breath). While many of their photographs and videos are simply set up to be strange and other-worldly, many of them have also had some sort of outside intervention, whether that be drawing strange sci-fi additions over the photos, collage, photo manipulations, and animation. While I am always excited to see anything different going on in fashion advertisement, their work is particularly interesting because it also speaks to other things, such as technology, medium and contemporary culture. Their work very successfully resides in both the worlds of fashion and art, and comments on both.

I know I always say this, but you really, seriously, need to look at their website. I couldn't post the moving images or their videos here, and there is just so much more on the website that I wish I could've posted. All of it really.

their website -so many amazing things here
their blog meowzas -has a complete list of their other projects and sites (flickr, youtube etc) on the links page






images: reedandrader.com
(last one is a video still)

Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein, and Tarsem Singh

        Since I mentioned The Fall in my last post, I felt it was an appropriate lead in to twin German animating/producing duo Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein, who animated a short sequence in the film. I feel conflicted about talking about this sequence, because it is really important that it be seen as it was intended (within the film), but in talking about the Lauensteins and animation in general it is a very important piece.

        To first quickly talk about The Fall (I'll try not to go on and on though I could); every image has been carefully crafted and beautifully executed, and from what I can understand much of this is credited to the director Tarsem Singh, who was fully dedicated to the film. There is never anything in the frame that was not intended to be in the frame, and everything within the frame is symbolic or integral to the film as a whole. No matter how many times I watch it I am always noticing new things and in constant awe of the raw beauty in the story and the way it has been executed.
        The acting is extremely real, partially because they are very talented and partially because one of the two main characters is played by a six year old girl, and this in many ways informed and changed the actual story (a mistake she makes is written into the script, filming in a hospital is done through holes in the bed-curtains so the intimate environment shared between her and the other main character is truthful, she was only allowed to see certain characters as they appear in the film, etc).

        Everything really comes together, and this in combination with the story make it extremely easy to become emotionally involved. There is a great deal of pain in the film, as well as discussion around the constructions of and ways of dealing with pain. The Lauensteins animated scene comes in at a very important turning point/climax in the film, and the sudden change in media (live-action to stop-motion) is EXTREMELY jarring (as it is intended to be).
        You can watch the scene without "ruining the ending" in any way, or anything like that (I promise), but what you will be losing is contextualization. Contextualization in terms of the way that every object in the sequence is significant, but also contextualization in the way that you will be missing the entire nature of why having this scene in stop-motion is so effective. So really I urge you to just watch the whole movie and look out for it. But if you want to just watch the scene (or have already seen the whole film) you can watch it here. It is the main character, Alexandria's construction of her surgery after falling and hitting her head. The sequence moves seamlessly back into live-action with direct relationship between the fluttering of butterfly wings and Alexandria's eyes blinking rapidly awake.
        The scene is, in the context of the film (and probably without it as well), pretty disturbing, which is to say that the Lauensteins have been extremely effective in creating a scene that both represents the way Alexandria would interpret the events as well as transferring the anxiety she would have felt to the viewer. This was a sort of revelatory moment for me, because though I have seen films with a mix of live-action and stop-motion (Jan Svankmajer's work for example) -it was usually used to briefly animate things that could not otherwise be moving about on their own in the environment of the live-action, and would happen throughout the film. Having just this one scene fully animated, and as a way to show a different perspective, especially that of a child, is just so perfect and so effective in relationship to the rest of the film that it really seemed to place animation on a different plane for me.

        It is also impressive stylistically and technically. The Lauensteins have a very distinctive style, which combines claymation, puppet animation, and computer animation, and the figures seen in The Fall are deeply reminiscent of the figures in their claymation short Balance from 1989, which have appeared in other (mainly advertising) work by the two since then as well. The scene in The Fall is a pretty big departure from their work thematically however, which is usually quite humorous.

        The Lauensteins are a good example of the different ways animation can be used, and the different effects it can have based on its contexts. I again, urge everyone to see The Fall, for this scene as well as the entire film, and also to check out The Lauensteins' site.



images: screen grabs from The Fall c. Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein

Bert & Bertie

        I happened across the trailer for The Taxidermist a couple weeks ago. I haven't seen such a beautiful trailer since the trailer for The Fall (which is one of my favorite films, every shot is absolutely astounding and the story is equally amazing).
        I don't even know where to begin, the color scheme is stunning, the shots carefully crafted, and I don't think I have ever seen special effects so effectively used. The storyline and acting appear awkward and yet at the same time beautiful and convincing.
        The Taxidermist is 22 minutes long, and has won "Best Live Action Film (over 15 min)" at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and "Best Cinematography" at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. The film was written and directed by British directorial team Bert & Bertie - about whom I was able to find nothing! Their website is very non-revealing, and only shows a quirky photo of the two, with links to their trailers. Hopefully more information about them will become available soon, as well as this film), which I am dying to see.

The Taxidermist Trailer
Bertie Films Website

        I could not get the trailers on their website to fully load (the link I have provided for The Taxidermist is on youtube), and I could not find the trailer for their other short film, Phobias (8min, which they directed but did not write) anywhere else. It is however available on iTunes for $2. If you're interested in Bert and Bertie I would say it is worth the $2 (I got it myself), the film is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, and definitely seems to exemplify their style and tone.



images: screen grabs from The Taxidermist Trailer, c. Bert & Bertie

Alice

        Tim Burton has always been one of my favorite artists. i believe the first time i saw The Nightmare Before Christmas i was about six or seven, and i was absolutely entranced by it- if anything i believe he gave me my early appreciation for beauty in darkness. since then i have seen most of his films (give or take a "planet of the apes" or two that i couldn't bring myself to watch) and poured over his writing and drawings, and have never ceased to be inspired by his style and spirit.
        i'm sure by now that most people have heard that he has taken a swing at Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which if you have read my previous post on Jan Svankmajer, you will know i have seen many (and been impressed by few) film versions of. anyway, promo pictures have been out for a while, but today a trailer was released, so i figured i would share it. i will say, that he does not seem to be staying particularly true to the book, but then again Disney's last whack at it was (albeit cute) pretty distant from the book as well, and my favorite film version really only mirrors the book in feel and mood. (and on a similar note i'll add that i'm disappointed that this is being footed by Disney, as I'm sure Burton could've pushed things much further with another company, but Disney is sure to make bank with Burton + Depp, so it was a smart move on their part and i'm sure they gave him a huge budget because of it)
        Burton's Alice at the very least promises to be exciting and visually striking, the trailer is enough to make you salivate. so take a look, and i'm sure i'll have more to say once i've seen the entire film! (which, fyi, comes out March 5 2010)

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland Trailer



images: imdb.com

Jamie Caliri

        i was reliving the 90's via youtube the other day, when i found myself watching Marcy Playground's Sex and Candy music video for the first time. i was sucked in by the moody color palette, giant Louise Bourgeois-esq spider, and general weirdness of it. i of course immediately went to find out who had directed it, and found Jamie Caliri.
        while Caliri has directed live-action music videos for a couple other music groups, what i find most exciting is his stop-motion animations using paper cutouts. i usually find myself annoyed with this sort of stop-motion (probably because when i see it all i can think of is scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) even when its used by some of my favorite directors. something about Caliri's i love though! if you've seen The United States of Tara, you've surely noticed how cool the opening credits are, which were done by Caliri. he also did the end credits for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate events, and oh my GOD. they should have entrusted him with the whole film. i am an enormous fan of the book series, and was so horrified with the film adaptation that i left before the credits even started, and i love them! they are in so much better keeping with the feel of the books. what a loss. anyway, you should absolutely watch that, and also his short film "The Sun and the Seed", which is really beautiful and strange.

you can find a list of all the videos he's directed on Caliri's website
and here are a few of his animated videos on youtube:
The Sun and the Seed
A Series of Unfortunate Events end credits
United States of Tara main titles



images: screen grabs from A Series of Unfortunate Events end credits

Tunde Adebimpe

        i was under the impression that i had already written this post, so you can imagine my confusion when i realized i had not. i'm done with school now, so my hope is to begin updating this closer to daily again! so gear up... and without further delay... cool things!


        if you know who Tunde Adebimpe is it's probably by his position heading up TV on the Radio. you may not have realized that Adebimpe is a true renaissance man. he acts (Rachel Getting Married) and, more importantly, has created the BAD. ASS. music video for the song Pin by another of my favorite bands, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. according to interscope, both the animation and direction are by Adebimpe! i'm on a stop-motion kick, so seeing this was really exciting! anyway, check it out. i promise you won't be disappointed.

watch the video here!


        another beautifully done music video featuring some stop motion (that i posted a while back) and is co-directed by Adebimpe (with Jon Watts) is his own band TV on the Radio's Wolf Like Me. i'm of course biased in my excitement because it's my favorite band and about werewolves, but it really is a beautiful video, so check it out!

photos: screen grabs from Pin

Jan Švankmajer

        So, my mind was just blown. I have probably seen 7 or 8 movie adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and honestly couldn't name one that I found particularly effective or even able to hold my attention for the entire length, which is frustrating to me because I am so in love with the story.
        Alice in Wonderland is probably one of the most overused/overreferenced narratives in art (just think photography alone) and is so infrequently done in a way that breathes it new life that it's almost tragic.

        Enter Czech animator Jan Švankmajer's "Alice" (1988). I've always been really into stop motion animation (The Nightmare Before Christmas was my favorite movie from an alarmingly young age) and this interest has recently been kicked into high gear, so there couldn't have been a better time for me to watch this film.
        I'm still not sure how I'd never heard of Švankmajer, since apparently he is not only a well known surrealist film maker, but one of the world's foremost animators, and an inspiration to some of my favorites (including Burton). His version of Alice struck me for a number of reasons, mainly being that he actually made it his own (ie made some major detail changes while sticking to the general feel of the story versus just presenting a play-by-play of the book), the look of the piece visually (what i understand to be his animation aesthetic is just astounding), and the way he has incorporated EVERYTHING that i'm interested in into a story that I already loved (repetition, abandoned spaces, taxidermy, etc etc etc). He manages to project a very dark telling of Alice, which I feel is often attempted and almost never pulled off (for a good photographic example of it working search Anna Gaskell's photographic series "Wonder" and "Override"). Some of the brilliant changes Švankmajer incorporates include having Alice become a doll when she shrinks, and having the rabbit be a taxidermied piece, who keeps his pocketwatch in his sawdust-filled chest.

        Anyway, the film is beautiful and all things surreal, and I can not wait to get my hands on more of his work. If you have netflix "Alice" is available on DVD as well as the "instant" watch option, I would definitely recommend checking it out. You can also watch clips of it on youtube but the quality isn't really fabulous (read: awful) and it's really worth seeing the whole film together.

For more information on Švankmajer see his website or his wikipedia page (which oddly enough seems to have more on him than his website).




photos are screen-grabs from youtube.