Finding perfection in the imperfections (Roisin Kelly)

Thomas Hicks: Music and Moving Images: Experiments and Explorations

 

Thomas Hicks is an award-winning animator who has created music videos for the likes of Paul McCartney, Newton Faulkner and Gravenhurst. Perhaps a surprising inclusion on the Manipulate programme was Thomas Hick’s curated presentation of his own work and other short films. The link to visual theatre becomes apparent however, through the lens of his work providing visual accompaniments to theatrical performances and creating music videos. Speaking at length about the relationship between the animator and music he creates a visual accompaniment for, the inspiration that music can provide and the influence on his style when animating becomes very much apparent.

 

This was an opportunity to see some of Hicks’ early work made while he was still studying at Kingston University. Seeing a collection of short animations and music videos that he has created over the past ten years showcases the development of his career and style in the context of his own work. His joy in finding beauty and the perfection in the imperfections or ‘happy accidents’ that occur when drawing and using software lend his work the unpolished edge that defines his signature style.

 

A small selection of short animated films selected by Hicks contrasted quirky vintage style and technical brilliance. Cirrus by Cyriak illustrates the mesmerising manipulation of footage from the fifties. Black Lake by David O’Reilly shows an astounding understanding of the possibilities and techniques available to animation artists. Backbone Tale by Jérémy Clapin is an unconventional love story. The juxtaposition of these varied pieces with Hicks’ own work gave an illuminating display of inspiration and skill.

Music and Moving Images gave an insight to the connection between animated art and the creation of music videos and stand-alone pieces of work. Hicks’ enthusiasm and knowledge of the subject was an informative accompaniment to a less conventional addition to the Manipulate programme.

Power and Puppets: Small Stories in a Big World – Films and Talk with Claire Lamond (Eric

 

With animator Iain Gardner leading the discussion,  2012 Edinburgh College of Art graduate Claire Lamond presents a collection of short animated films. These include three of Lamond’s own creations and a selection of shorts by other animators. The other shorts deal with various social/mental health issues, such as dealing with grief after losing a loved one and fear of the world.

The presentation begins with Lamond’s debut film All that Glisters (2012, 8’), which follows a girl whose father is suffering from asbestos poisoning. While the dialogue itself is quite subtle, the moments of silent action – for example when the main character decides to smear her clothing with glitter pens to attend a funeral – become incredibly powerful.

Furthermore, the rough texture of the puppets Lamond uses seems fitting, and seems to make them more human, although it’s quite easy to see they are not. This persists across the other two films she brings to manipulate: Seams and Embers (2012, 7’) that sheds light on the UK miners and their lifestyle, and hope-restoring war film Sea Front(2014, 8’).

On the other side of the war-film genre sits Danish Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto (2012, 7’). Using puppets with human eyes and black-and-white instead of colour, Johan Oettinger sets the scene for the sorry tale of a little boy who goes for a wander in the Warsaw ghetto before dinner.

Meanwhile, Suzie Templeton’s BAFTA-winning Dog (2001, 6’) provides a completely different take on familial grief. A young boy and his father struggle to deal with the death of his mother while the family dog looks like it might follow in her footsteps. Morbid, yes, yet also awkwardly funny as each character deals with the grief differently.

Daisy Jacobs’ The Bigger Picture (2014, 8’) continues the theme of films about a family member dying. Two brothers at constant odds with each other have to negotiate around each other while caring for their aging, dying mother. Funny at times, and at others surprisingly accurate about life and the effect stress and grief can have on the psyche, it’s not hard to relate to the anecdotes, in spite of the elaborate,yet elegant surreal drawn animation. Perhaps that’s why The Bigger Picture received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

The shortest film on the programme is Jerry Hibert’s Unison Bear (1995, 1’), a public ad from the nineties recruiting members for Unison, the public service union. Short, funny, yet effective, it reflects the power of the medium of animation.

 

French animated film Apeuree (Scared, 2012, 5’) by Patricia Sourdes explores the anxious, tentative existence of a girl who is scared of everything. It’s hard to decide if Scared is outright hilarious or tragic, as it seems like a very entertaining situation from the outside, but most likely isn’t for the anxiety-ridden character.

Humorous Argentinian film El Empleo (2008, 7’) by Santiago Bou Grasso presents a universe where the meaning of ‘work’ is driven to a whole new definition. People take the place of ordinary objects to make a living – such as a lamp – and seem to be taken for granted, like cogs of a well-oiled machine. If one part doesn’t function, it would simply be replaced, which seems like a broader commentary on the way work takes over people’s lives due to the fear of losing a job.

With this rich programme, Lamond’s theme of power and puppets seems to be explored quite widely, although at times it seems to lead to more questions than answers.

 

(Eric Karoulla)

Animated Delights (Holly Wedgwood)

When you think of theatre, or theatre festivals, you don’t ever really associate them with the idea of animation. Animation belongs in a film festival – right?

Wrong.

This Feburary the Traverse theatre played host to the exciting visual arts festival Manipulate which brought with it theatre from all over the globe and (yes, you guessed it) animation.

 

But why?

Maybe a happy coincidence or the plan all along – either way, you can’t knock a relaxing late night animated showcase after a spot of theatre.

This festival, I was lucky enough to catch two of the animated show cases: Oppressed Creatures which showed the work of Estonian Ulo Pikkov, and Animated Nightmares which played the work of England’s  Robert Morgan. Both shows juxtapose quite neatly (one being delightfully European; the other terrifyingly gruesome).

Prior to their own films, we also got to see examples of works which inspired them so we could see where their vision came from; and between the films the animators themselves introduced and chatted with us, answering questions and regaling us with their stories.

All in all, it was worth every minute and while I found some pieces of animation ambiguous or totally nonsensical the animators helpful explanations brought to light that some times it’s more about appreciating craft than the creation.

In the case of Ulo Pikkov a lot of his work stood more like a beautiful piece of art than a film. So this brings me to thinking – where is the line between film and theatre? Does theatre have to be on a stage for it to be “theatre” and where does animation sit in the middle of a “theatre festival”? The answer is that it probably doesn’t – logically – but it’s bit like cheese and chocolate … until you try them together you’ll never know if they fit, and when they do well, isn’t that just perfect?

Now, having experienced this duo, I can vouch for it being a marriage made in heaven! Even if it’s only to appreciate an art form, the next time Manipulate shows up on our doorstep at the Traverse for the ninth time – make a point to head to two shows in one night and make sure that one of them is animation and you’ll find that you unwind and soak up an art form that is unappreciated, delightful, uplifting, often bewildering, insightful and always a joy.

Crockett’s Fall review – Jordan Shaw

In Crockett’s Fall, Anna Hughes brings together printmaking, animation and sound to explore the recurrent internal narratives that plague an anxious mind. The film takes us through the psychological sturm und drang of Crockett, the faceless, genderless protagonist, whose presence provides the audience with a way into a film that is both deeply personal and conceptually universal.

The opening image, later revealed to be the head of the protagonist, contains the kernel of Crockett’s Fall: a jagged wave, emblazoned across a sand-coloured canvas, tears itself apart; the fragments dance around in a circle before finally reuniting. The sense of fracture created by this image is sustained throughout the piece by Hughes’ use of sound. Her simple score, beaten out on an assortment of disparate instruments, is brutal and repetitive, evoking the disconnection and discomfort caused by cyclical thought processes. This effect is amplified by the sparse script which, distilled into a series of disconnected soundbites, emanates from various different points in the auditorium.

This abrasive soundscape provides an unsettling backdrop to a montage of animated prints that tell a universal story of struggle and isolation. The tactility and physicality of the prints and the low-fi nature of the sound lend the entire piece a handmade quality that amplifies the subject matter; it feels personal, it feels authentic.

This is the film’s greatest strength. Crockett’s Fall deftly negotiates the divide between the personal and the universal, addressing widely resonant themes while retaining a deeply intimate feel. Through a skilful integration of disciplines, Hughes creates a familiar sense of discomfort and draws the audience in, enabling us to see ourselves in the film and the film in ourselves.

Thomas Hicks: MUSIC & MOVING IMAGES 1: EXPERIMENTS & EXPLORATIONS

The trajectory of Thomas Hick’s animation  – from early experiments that celebrated the glitches of his animation process to corporate commissions to illustrate the songs of Skunk Anansie and Paul McCartney – could be read as a journey into the commercial heart of modern animation. Hicks describes himself as an illustrator and animator, and his later music videos make a virtue of bringing out the detail of the song.

Following a chronological presentation of his own work, Hicks introduced Cirrus by Cyriak (2012): ostensibly a video for a track by Bonobo, it served as a dramatic contrast to Hick’s increasingly polite approach. The music is a mere soundtrack to Cyriak’s manipulation of footage from 1950s’ USA: isolating and collaging fragments, it evolves into a mechanistic series of integrated activities, casting the sentimental Americana as a factory of human pleasures, soulless and expansive.

Hick’s attitude is more gentle: for two of his videos, he includes the lyrics within his animations (exposing, in the case of McCartney, how generic and dull his song-writing became after The Beatles), and he places his animation at the service of the music. This does see diminishing returns. By 2010, when he starts to get more famous artists to commission him, the intriguing use of flicker and mistake has been replaced by footage of musicians in animated backdrops: the idiosyncratic and provocative student style has been replaced by a polished precision.

Hick’s strength is in his ability to add to a song’s atmosphere, rather than use it as a template for his own style or content. Consequently, his work with Gravenhurst is more experimental and intimate in tone, while the McCartney collaboration is bombastic and spectacular. There’s a sense that he has been commissioned to add a quirky energy to some bland songs – no disrespect to his process, but rather a reflection of how the music industry uses video.

Philippos Philippou on Ubu Roi

I  basically love the play.

When I started my masters at the University of Edinburgh, one of the books we studied was the Olga Taxidou’s Modernism and Performance: From Jarry to Brecht. I wondered, and I said to myself: “hmm: I know Brecht but who the hell is Jarry?” After all, I am a stage director, I have to know. That’s one of my obligations: to study, to learn, to experience new practises and theories on theatre.

What I am trying to say is that I am always curious and open to the new; I am questioning everything around me. So I went to the library, and literary I “sucked” the Ubu trilogy in a few hours. I was shocked when I discover that Alfred Jarry was 15 years old when he wrote the first draft of the play. He was just a child and he came to change the nature of theatre.

The play is very diverse and is loosely based on many classical theater plays. One can see Shakespeare’s Macbeth along with traces from Moliere and Racine. It is magical, based on slapstick humour, Grand Guignol fantasy and extreme imagination. It is a stream of images that achieved to shock and alienate the critics and the audience.

Moreover, I am fan of cartoons and animation. The play offers the chance for experimentation in its most extreme form; and for me this is what animation and visual theatre does as well. However, the play appeared at a time when Europe and France was overwhelmed by naturalism. During its dress rehearsal the play was interrupted several times. Supporters of Naturalism, artists and critics were swearing, throwing chairs etc, which made me think that there are two significant reasons to stage Ubu Roi nowadays: to see whether a play from one hundred years ago could still speak or even shock the audience today, as well as to find a new way to tell its story through the incorporation of puppets with new visual media.

So after I submitted my Master’s thesis on Ubu Roi, I decided to give it a try:  To experiment with the play/toy of a child in order to study classic theatre and New Media.

Introduction to Manipulate 2015

The idea of ‘the festival’ has grabbed the imagination of Scottish promoters in the past decade: from minimal, the Glaswegian season of contemporary classical composition, through to Buzzcut, which gathers experimental live artists from around the UK, the festival model allows a concentrated burst of a niche art form, both expanding audiences and developing appreciation. Manipulate‘s focus on ‘visual theatre’ and animated film curates from a broad school of diverse artists, yet retains a clear artistic vision.

2015 sees several companies arriving in Edinburgh who have already demonstrated their popularity through the August Fringe. Akhe are stalwarts of the Fringe, and their Mr Carmen was first seen as part of a Russian season at The Assembly Roxy. CEC are back after a run at Summerhall with Maria Addolorata (which is heading to Fife). And both Ramesh Mayyappen, All or Nothing and paper Doll Militia have established themselves within Scotland, being based in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively.

Visual Theatre does admit of many interpretations, yet Simon Hart’s definition is simple. Theatre that relies on the image as the primary carrier of communication replaces the more common script-based performance: they may take in aspects of dance, like CEC or Andrea Miltnerova, or puppetry, like Mayyappen and Akhe, but they refuse any further, easy definition. Rather like the late,  lamented New Territories in Glasgow, manipulate is a home for performance that is difficult to categorise.

The importance of a festival like this can be felt both in audience development and the creative communities. An opportunity to see work that is often more popular across continental Europe (hinting at more sophisticated tastes abroad) provokes Scottish artists to push their own art: audiences, meanwhile, can discover that the tag ‘experimental’ need not mean ‘self-indulgent’. While Akhe use a complicated approach to theatre making, described sometimes as ‘architectural’, Mr Carmen takes a classic tale of love and loss, and articulates it with comic and evocative imagery. The Dance of the Magnetic Ballerina looks at choreography from a series of new angles.

Scotland is known for a commitment to new theatre, but it is only through the support of organisations like Puppet Animation Scotland that this can continue. The vitality of performance is best maintained through an awareness of the wider world’s theatre, preventing parochialism and opening up new strategies and influences.

SMALL STORIES IN A BIG WORLD. A few words with Claire Lamond

In Small Stories in a Big World, Claire Lamond presents and talks about a programme of her films, together with a selection of international animation which has inspired and excited her.

Drawn to small stories that reflect powerfully and engage emotionally with our society’s wider political and social environment and challenges, award-winning animator Claire Lamond screens three of her own films: ALL THAT GLISTERS (2012, 8’), SEAMS & EMBERS (2012, 7’) and SEA FRONT (2014, 8’).

Together with the following shorts, Claire’s choices articulate with humour and poignancy a wide range of human issues with both big and a small p political subjects and contexts:

DOG Suzie Templeton/England 2001, 6’  A young boy longs for reassurance about how his mother died while he and his Dad protect each other by holding their agony inside.

THE BIGGER PICTURE Daisy Jacobs/England 2014, 8’  The life-size animated tale of two sons, one ageing mum, and no end in sight.

SCARED Patricia Sourdes/France 2012, 5’  A gentle but poignant tale about a girl living with anxiety.

BALANCE Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein/Germany 1989, 8’ When your whole world is a floating platform how do you maintain the balance?

UNISON BEAR Jerry Hibert/England 1995, 1’  Join the union!

SEVEN MINUTES IN THE WARSAW GHETTO Johan Oettinger/Denmark 2012, 7’  Based on an actual event, a little boy finds himself in the middle of the brutal world of the Holocaust.

First of all, the inevitable question: what made you decide on animation as your medium?

I was drawn into animation through the enchantment of stories. I was studying illustration at Telford College and every brief I got cried out for more than a single still representation. I couldn’t get away from an urge to add the element of time and narrative onto what I created. That and a love of textiles and textures and a desire to turn them into things.

How do you feel your work fits in with manipulate’s general atmosphere?

When you say you work in animation a lot of people assume you make things for children. I’m sure the same is true for puppeteers. What’s wonderful about Manipulate is that it makes clear that the magic of storytelling and communication of ideas in these creative and abstract ways is fantastic for adults.

As a puppet animator, it’s also great to see my work in the context of ‘puppets’ in addition to its more usual placement in a film world. What I do is manipulate puppets… just painfully slowly!

Your work has a very distinctive aesthetic: do you have any particular influences – both within and beyond animation?

When I saw Suzie Templeton’s film Dog, which is part of the programme on Thursday night, a light went on for me as I realised that she had made something that brought many of my passions together: interesting films about normal folk wrestling with the loves and lows of life (I’m a big fan of Ken Loach), a slightly dark but respectful view of humans, and a use of textures and textiles and darkly appealing puppets. She has been a massive influence.

Is Scotland a good place to be an animator?

I could be flippant and say “I work in a black cupboard, it could be anywhere” but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. Scotland’s an exciting place to be an animator. There’s a buzz going on and good number of interesting people making lots of exciting things. Very much a sense of community whether you’re working independently or as part of a studio encouraging local talent like Kolik.

Robert Morgan: Animated Nightmares

Robert Morgan’s website claims that he lives in a haunted house, and was born in ‘the cursed town of Yateley’. It’s appropriate for an artist who has pursued the darker side of animation, and follows a tradition that combines horror and psychological terror.

‘If I had to align myself with anything, I’d say that it belongs more to a weirder, arthouse tradition in horror films exemplified by the likes of David Cronenberg, Polanski, Lynch, Svankmajer, or the weird fiction of people like Thomas Ligotti, or the weird art of people like Alfred Kubin,’ he says. ‘But that’s a pretty rag-tag bunch.’

For manipulate, Morgan presents Animated Nightmares which brings together his award-winning work (his website has an impressive list of successes) and other work that has impressed him. Svankmajer’s Meat Love makes a welcome appearance, as well as a idiosyncratic horror that introduces unicorns to the genre.

‘I certainly think stop-motion animation lends itself to horror, in numerous ways,’ he says. ‘Other types of animation, I’m not so sure. But stop-motion is inherently an uncanny medium. It deals with bringing dead – or lifeless –  things to life, but it brings them life in a strange, mechanical, uncanny way. Personally I’ve always found that it lends itself more to weird and disturbing stories than the comedy its mostly used for.’

Svankmajer has undoubtedly demonstrated the uncanniness of stop-motion animation; his fragmented narratives evoke surrealism, but the disjointed movements and lurching puppetry lend his films an undercurrent of anxiety and absurdity.

Morgan’s films tap into that same anxiety, using the monstrous as a metaphor for inner turmoil: if the images aren’t frightening enough, their implications are.

The use of puppets not only allows Morgan to make fantastic creatures (Bobby Yeah is part-human, part demon), but imbue them with life and movements that are not quite recognisable, not quite alien. The atmosphere becomes tense, even as the characters perform the most mundane tasks.

This tallies with Morgan’s ideas about the potential of stop-motion, and connects him to ‘a rather vague tradition’ of film-makers who are intrigued by the darkness lurking beneath the mundane. Animated Nightmares showcases some of this work, celebrating technical skill but promising an unsettling evening.

My Top Five Manipulate Moments

Coming in at number five, we have the invitation by a bewigged Cupid to the audience to ‘come and have a feel of the puppets’ (Bestiares). Only moments earlier, when the performers took their bow, I turned to Elliot Roberts and asked ‘where are the other two?’ before realising that Hades and Persephone were, in fact, the foamy objects on the stage and not, in fact, real people.

At number four, it’s Paper Doll Militia’s name. Sure, they are great at the aerial action, swinging on silks and spinning through the air, but the mash-up of hardcore action and gentle childhood toy makes their name one of the most evocative tags since cabaret-punk or progressive rock. But unlike the latter, they delivered on the promise.

An odd entry at number three: not getting tickets to Grit. I might have been sorry to miss the show – a moving reflection on war and childhood, but it is wonderful that a Scottish based company are selling out at a festival that has plenty of international presence. 

In at two, there’s Lonely Bones in the Tilt your Thinking compilation of animated shorts. I have always wanted to know what would happen if Nick Cave made a feature with David Lynch, and Rosto’s disorientating journey through multiple animation techniques, leering ghosts and vague occultists felt like a jam between a group of surrealists and the cast of the grand guignol.

But coming out at the top of the charts, it has to be the monstrous moment of monolithic mayhem when Planet Luvos went underwater and the five dancers became twisted creatures with hands for legs and bottoms for eyes. Neither horrific nor soothing, the contortions went beyond being impressive to staking out new ground for manipulation of the human body.