Tag: animation

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When birds echo humanity: the uncanny art of Mara Eagle

Mara Eagle discussed her work at the vernissage for “Pretty Talk,” FoFA Gallery, Concordia University. Photo by Emma Bell / The Concordian.

Birds or humans? Eagle blurs the lines with “Pretty Talk.”

Concordia’s FOFA (Faculty of Fine Arts) Gallery has been echoing with all sorts of unsettling sounds this past week. Not to be alarmed,  it has simply been hosting Mara Eagle’s “Pretty Talk” exhibition.

Eagle, an American artist, has designed a unique audiovisual experience for her audience. Stepping into the FOFA Gallery, it is impossible to ignore the strange yet familiar sounds that pierce the heavy black curtain separating the exhibition room from the receptionist’s office. Behind the curtain, an incongruous setting is revealed: in the middle of a dimly lit room surrounded by a white picket fence, the only furnishings are two white Adirondack chairs placed on a faux grass tile. 

Viewers watching “Pretty Talk,” FoFA Gallery, Concordia University. Photo by Emma Bell / The Concordian.

On the wall facing the chairs, a 15-minute 3D animation—rendered in a disturbing, uncanny-valley-like style—is projected on a loop. On the opposite wall, a descriptive sheet indicates that the soundtrack—which sharpens once the viewer enters the space and reveals all manner of human noises such as farts, baby cries, laughter, screams and more—is in fact made up of bird mimicry. 

In the short animated film, increasingly repulsive characters appear in turn, such as a huge infant with facial and torso hair and a grandfather with shark-like teeth. They are merely pale imitations of human beings: their jerky movements, misshapen and offbeat facial expressions, grotesquely proportioned bodies, and lifeless eyes all betray their artificiality and send chills down the spine.

The soundtrack is composed of hundreds of fragments of mimicked human sounds, which combined to the visuals make for a rather horrifying experience. The superimposition of the muffled and high-pitched bird mimicry noises creates a cacophony that sounds alien. 

Mara Eagle discussed her work at the vernissage for “Pretty Talk,” FoFA Gallery, Concordia University. Photo by Emma Bell / The Concordian.

The 3D animation and accompanying soundtrack are played in a loop until the gallery closes, allowing viewers to watch the whole thing as many times as they need to absorb the work’s weirdness. Afterwards, the audience can watch a seven-minute video about the artist’s creative process in a more intimate screening room toward the exit. 

On the screen, Eagle explains that she created the soundtrack first and foremost. The visuals were thereafter created to fit the sounds and were animated by her collaborator Calum MacConnell. Eagle explains that she spent a long while researching and collecting hundreds of hyper-realistic bird mimicry sound samples on the internet using YouTube and other platforms, for she wanted her project to be very low budget and DIY. She then collaged and organized all the bird sound samples, which ended up making a 15-minute soundtrack. She was inspired to make her project into a loop because of how repetitive bird speech tends to be. 

The bizarre, interesting and complete experience of “Pretty Talk” is not only enthralling, but it also serves a good cause. Eagle is working in collaboration with a Quebec-based organization called Perroquetsecours to raise funds towards rehoming birds that are in need of adoption. Her tote bags are for sale at the FOFA gallery for $25 and all of the proceeds will be donated to this cause.

Tote bag for “Pretty Talk,” FoFA Gallery, Concordia University. Photo by Emma Bell / The Concordian.
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Arts

Shannon Amen at FNC: Mourning in beautiful animation

Chris Dainty’s short film is a mesmerizing tale of grief, friendship and inventiveness.

For his first film in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), Chris Dainty tells the story of his departed best friend and queer artist Shannon Jamieson, who committed suicide in 2006. He reanimates her art and poetry, and does it with innovative techniques and poignant storytelling.

Shannon Amen seems like a very suitable title for the film. Not only does it feel like an elegy, but it also relates Jamieson’s struggles with religion and sexuality.

“I believe every word of the Bible and still desire a relationship with God but feel like I can’t because I’m gay.” Those are the words of Jamieson which the film uncovers. Dainty only realized the gravity of his best friend’s inner battles after her death.

“She felt like a different person almost,” said Dainty, when talking about his experience of going through Jamieson’s art and poetry, after her suicide. He had never known about most of what he found, and never suspected how tormented she was.

The film recreates some of Jamieson’s relationships and art projects. It starts as she climbs inside a church in Lyon, France, and sings, with her guitar.

One of the key settings in Shannon Amen is a farm, probably inspired by the rural town of Hawkesbury, Ontario, where Jamieson and Dainty grew up. Over the years, they worked on many art projects. One of them is beautifully told in the film, mixing animation and archival footage, when Chris went to take pictures of Jamieson and her girlfriend, portraying queer love gently and candidly.

Jamieson was a multidisciplinary artist who delved into poetry, music, painting and more. One of her paintings, Self-portrait, becomes animated in Dainty’s film, and seems to perfectly encapsulate her struggles with her sexuality and fierce personality.

Self-Portrait, Shannon Jamieson.

The artist graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia. She exhibited her artworks in various solo and group shows, most notably in Montreal, Vankleek Hill, and San Francisco.

While Dainty didn’t follow his best friend to Montreal, he still pursued an artistic career and has been living in Ottawa for most of his life. He has been practicing ice sculpting there for many years and, for the first time in his life, has combined that skill with his animation film career.

He developed a technique for Shannon Amen that he calls “icemation.” He literally animated ice sculptures, which allowed for more poetic possibilities, gorgeous images and unusual sound effects.

Dainty said he and his team carved up to 30 blocks of ice, which weighed about 300 pounds. It would take them three to six hours for each. Luckily, even though we only see them for a few seconds, the animated ice sculptures were worth all the effort. The scenes they create are quite beautiful.

It felt more organic, more natural, to use frozen water to represent the character of Shannon,” said Dainty. “The ice was her essence, her soul […] It was strong, yet fragile. It was the perfect analogy for Shannon.”

Dainty was very happy the NFB decided to take on his project. The desire of developing icemation was just one of the very challenging goals he had in mind when thinking about making Shannon Amen, and he thinks he could not have done it without them.

“They are the only ones that would support a project this ambitious,” he said. He also talked about how his producer would always question him and challenge his ideas, which resulted in them making “the right decisions” for the movie and making it as good as it could be.

The entire process of making Shannon Amen was supposed to take two years but turned out to be a four-year journey, because of the various technical developments and script rewrites.

Despite all the work and all the wait that it took before he could see his film come to life, Dainty said he is now very happy about it. It is indeed a beautiful film that will certainly resonate with the public. It not only tells a touching story, but also redefines the power of art and film, transcending purely temporal issues and giving a new life to important memories.

Shannon Amen will be presented at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma on Oct. 17, at the Cinémathèque Québécoise, in the national short films competition. Chris Dainty will also host one of the free Artist’s talk of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation, where he will talk about animation filmmaking, at the Cinémathèque, on Oct. 24.

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Arts

Still life is anything but lifeless

Belliveau uses bronze and aluminum casting to transform living objects, like flowers and fruit, into solid, permanent works of art. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Elisabeth Belliveau discusses inspiration for her exhibition, Ballroom

Elisabeth Belliveau, an award-winning Concordia alumna, still life animation artist, sculptor and art professor, opened the doors to her new exhibition, Ballroom, on Feb. 2.

The exhibition will be open for a month, and will feature a two-channel, seven-minute animation loop along with related sculptures.

The works in this exhibition were created during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in 2016. Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

“Fragile, vibrant and transformative,” are three words Belliveau used to describe the works in Ballroom.

The exhibition reflects on historically female art practices, such as genre painting, which portrays scenes from ordinary life. In the past, women were not permitted to paint religious portraits or court paintings, which limited them to painting still life.

“I look at the work of artists who were creating floral arrangements, still lifes or food that were coded and symbolic,” Belliveau said. “They could bury narratives, meanings and stories within these still life paintings that seemed really innocuous but were really complex. I think that’s really exciting to think about; women painting and finding their way into that world within those limitations.”

Belliveau has participated in an array of residencies across Canada and internationally. She began the works included in Ballroom during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in 2016. The theme of the residency was still life, which focuses on the arrangement of inanimate objects. Throughout the residency, Belliveau had the opportunity to work with bronze and aluminum casting.

Envisioning and crafting the transformation of materials was one of the artist’s favourite processes while creating the exhibition. These transformations are often done using delicate and temporary objects, such as food and flowers, that are casted into more permanent objects using metal. “It’s still fragile, but I really love that transformation, which is why I think I love animation too,” Belliveau said. “There’s something still, and then it transforms into something with emotion. I like that moment, that flip.”

Inspiration for Ballroom came from a selection of novels written by Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, including The Stream of Life and The Hour of the Star. These novels, as well as paintings by Giorgio Morandi, an Italian still life painter, sparked Belliveau’s ideas about time, transformation and still life. These ideas became intrinsic to Belliveau’s own work.

“Thinking a lot about Giorgio Morandi’s practice, reading Clarice Lispector and really reflecting on the history of still life inspired me,” the artist explained. “I’m an animator, so I think about what it means to bring still objects into life, into movement and into emotion.”

Belliveau elaborated on her work in another residency in Japan last summer, where she focused on Japanese traditions of still life and the genre of vanitas art, and was inspired by the rules of Ikebana—the Japanese art of flower arrangement. “In terms of still life, there’s this kind of European tradition. I tried to mix it up with some of the things I was really interested with in Japan,” she said.

Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

For Belliveau, still life is about domestic life and the objects surrounding us. “Paying close attention to what things are and where they come from link to ideas about labour, production, who makes things, how they get to our table and all the political movement around that,” Belliveau said.

Taking part in residencies is a crucial aspect of Belliveau’s creative process. As a full-time assistant professor at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alta., Belliveau is constantly busy throughout the academic year. “Residencies are the best way for me to have a total break from thinking about school and my students,” she said. “Usually, during the year, I’m stirring up ideas and I can’t wait to get back to the studio, so residencies have been incredibly important to me.”

Belliveau is currently preparing for her upcoming month-long residency in Fukuoka, Japan, this May where she will work with a 3D printer.

“I love to travel to see work, and I think that’s sort of what I do; I collect things, I read things and I try to see as much art as I can,” the artist said.

Ballroom is on display at La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse (4296 St-Laurent Blvd.) until Mar. 2. The gallery is open from Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. Entry is free.

Feature photo by Mackenzie Lad

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Arts

Going beyond the classic cartoons

Concordia graduate Daniel Sterlin-Altman positions the characters of his short film Hi it's your mother Photo courtesy of Daniel Sterlin-Altman

If you roll your eyes every time your friend tells you animations are  a sophisticated version of Disney films, you should take them to the 15th edition of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation.

The festival that put Montreal animation on the map is back with a dazzling program. The festival ran until Nov. 27 and  hosted a total of 148 short films, two feature films and three exhibits. It also featured an international film selection and conferences on the future of animation.

This year, the festival’s competitive programs focused on 29 shorts and included work from three Concordia graduates, whose work was selected from 400 submissions:  Le clitoris  by Lori Malépart-Traversy;  Nutag, Homeland by Alisi Telengut   and Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s stop-motion Hi it’s your mother.

Telengut painted each frame of the film by hand for her pictorial and aesthetically delightful short Nutag, Homeland. It is based on the forceful relocation to Siberia of the Kalmyk people of the Soviet Union during WWII. “The camera was on top and I always painted on the same surface, unlike traditional animation which is made by changing papers. For each image, I would take off the oil pastel and start again,” said Telengut.

Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s Hi it’s your mother is a hilarious and refreshing look at filial love. “I want this film to contribute to the still very small roster of queer animated films,” Sterlin-Altman said. “In this film the queerness is meant to just be a part of the film, definitely contributing to shock value, but the focus is not on a tragedy or conflict with queer identity. I think this film can help show that queerness can be a part of animated narratives and not such an emotional trauma.”

Sterlin-Altman, who graduated from Concordia with a BFA in animation and a minor in human environment, said he is obsessed with small things, like puppets.

“I worked with a ridiculously long list of materials that are mostly found from anywhere around my house. I really love how stop motion filmmaking is all about repurposing things from the big world to do something different in the mini world,” said Sterlin-Altman. “I made the characters out of a material called foam latex, which takes the form of a mold I sculpted and allows me to squish it and manipulate it without ruining the shape.”

Concordia Graduate Alisi Telengut is the director of Nutag, Homeland Photo by: Katherine Delorme

What Marco de Blois, the festival’s organizer and former Concordia professor  loves most about Sterlin-Altman Hi it’s your mother is that it made de Blois laugh at a time where he was exhausted from binge-watching short films. “The film is a comical masterpiece which allows the public to breathe,” de Blois said.

The winners of the student competition were announced on Sunday,  Nov. 27 during the award and closing ceremony of the festival at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

According to de Blois, the event featured three prevailing themes. It didn’t take long before the Clyde Henry Productions’ impressively detailed and nightmarish puppets came to life in the halls of the Cinémathèque and set the tone for the first theme: monsters and creatures.

The opening night of the festival also gave us a taste of the second theme—the significant presence of female directors. The Sommets kicked off with Noémie Marsily and Carl Roosens’ short film, I don’t feel anything anymore, and Ann Marie Fleming’s long feature, Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming, a touching tale about a young Canadian poet who reconnects with her roots by attending a poetry festival in Iran.

For its third main theme, the festival joined forces with the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) for the first time to present the animated reality section. Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre’s  Oscar, a short about jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, visually bridged documentary and animation together.

“The mission of the festival goes beyond the notion of animation as something cute, funny and made for children—which it is—but not only,” said de Blois. “Animation can also be surprising, innovative, social and political.”

As creative as it is zany, the 15th edition of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation overflowed with events dedicated to the student community, such as the Money and Eyeballs panel discussion on films funding and a meeting with Framestore studio where speakers spoke about job opportunities in the visual effects industry.

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