Blu and David Ellis

This animation is amazing! The way the drawing, movement, space, light and sound are interacting must haven taken a lot of hard work and creative thinking to work out. I like the way this piece moves seamlessly back and forth between hand drawn animation and stop motion animation. It reminds me of how Jan Svankmajer might use the environment as material for animation such as in the Fall of the House of Usher or The Flat.

What I find interesting is how they imagined a meandering narrative of events unfolding throughout the space. What they give us is a stream of conscious interplay between the given realities of the space and environment and what it provokes in their imagination. Having the figures (Blu and Davis) making the animation almost before our eyes, places an emphasis on process: the animating, drawing and painting. For me the idea becomes less about the quirky and funny imagery as it is about how we project our fantasies into the real world in a kind of call and responds dance. Also the idea of memory and trace as we navigate through the world and make out mark so to speak is implicit in how we are away of the past and present as we watch the animation unfold. This evocation of memory into the unfolding present is something one sees in William Kentridge animations as well. It becomes a pentimenti moving in time and space. This is a quality ones sees in the static format of drawing and painting in Alberto Giacometti, Richard Diebenkorn and Willem de Koonig works.