W5 : ANIMATED FEARS AND DESIRES

Animated Fears and Desires presents recent works by two artists duos - Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott and Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby. These works are partly or totally made of animations, but the most interesting common ground is that they all employ real or imagined animals in a metaphoric register in order to analyse the human nature and face us to its paradox.
Since 2009, the multidisciplinary artist Jessie Mott and the artist, writer and professor Steve Reinke collaborate on a series of video animations. Everybody (2009), Blood & Cinnamon (2010) and A Day for Cake and Accidents (2013) are disconcertingly simple, consisting of a number of crudely drawn animals, roughly and luridly coloured. Accompanied by dance and pop music, the animals debate about suicide, shame and discomfort in one’s own body, the merits of reconstructive surgery, the universe and planets, existential crises.
In their richly textured videos, Duke and Battersby employ live action footage, scavenged images, and simple animations to create episodic structures that evince a simultaneously utopian and dystopian world view. Lesser Apes (2010) tells the story of a love affair between a primatologist, Farrah and a female bonobo ape, Meema. Beauty Plus Pity (2009) considers the potential for goodness amidst the troubled relations between God, humanity, animals, parents and children: partly apologia, partly call to arms, Beauty Plus Pity contemplates the shame and beauty of existence. (AC)

Program:

Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott - Everybody
2009, 4’05", colour, English spoken.
Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott - Blood & Cinnamon
2010, 5’26", colour, English spoken.
Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott - A Day for Cake and Accidents
2013, 4’09", colour, English spoken.
Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby - Beauty Plus Pity
2009, 14’20", colour, English spoken.
Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby - Lesser Apes
2010, 12’43", colour, English and French spoken, English running titles, French subtitles.

This event is part of Spring 2013 : New Acquisitions in the Black Box