Another Ordinary AfternoonAnimation has always held a fascination for me. Here Kasai’s choice of stop-frame animation almost masochistically enacts the very story she has chosen to illustrate. I mean really, how different can the positioning and shooting of some 31 frames for each second of video be from the endless repetitive toil of that little amorphous Arp-like character she has created. And then there is the whimsy, much like those passing clouds which are born and strung up across the sky. Can one help but wonder what green keys wind an artist like Kasai up?
It would be easy to dismiss this as simply a crude little work of a now almost ancient art form, however we must contend with various readings - both intended and unintended. First i can’t let the opportunity to repeat the name of the great master of stop-frame animation Ray Harryhausen. These days, thanks to Pixar, Lucasfilms and the technological wunderkinds that inhabit Hollywood, we have come to expect the seamless perfection technological solutions can afford us. But in the process we lose sight of the fragility and warmth of the artist’s own hand.
Once, a few years back, while strolling through the countless booths at FIAC, the large international art fair in Paris, my eye caught sight of a gallery displaying the work of Bram van Velde. Amidst a gathering of work by some of the most highly regarded artists, i was instantly struck by how apparent Bram’s own trembling hand was in his crude gouaches. This wasn’t “art” or “beauty,” a comment or a lesson, or even a representation, but merely a heart laid bare. There was the artist, no not even an “artist,” just Bram himself struggling to come to terms with himself and the world. Don’t be fooled, this is no small feat and when one begins to look through galleries, museums and monographs, one soon discovers that what one first dismissed as a mark of inferiority is actually the rarest sign of integrity and mastery. Bram himself said that “what makes a canvas fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is extremely rare. Most people don’t dare to be sincere.”
Another story comes to mind: My friend Gregory Colbert is a filmmaker and photographer who has traveled throughout the world, shooting interactions between man and wild animals, notably elephants and whales. His work is now traveling about the world in a nomadic museum as an exhibition called Ashes and Snow. Long before his present celebrity, folks at Spielberg or somebody else’s Hollywood studio had caught wind of his project and came to see some of his footage. Apparently after watching some roughs they asked Colbert how long he had worked on it and how much it had cost him. Colbert told them that he’d been shooting over a ten year period and he had spent some six figures of his own money in the process. The guys from the studio took the liberty of pointing out his folly by explaining that they could have created the same footage on a computer in six weeks and at one-tenth the cost. Colbert just shook his head and said, “Perhaps, but I was out there swimming with that elephant and performing an underwater ballet with that wild manatee; while you have been sitting there staring at a computer screen.” Now, whatever one thinks of Colbert’s work, he’s got a point: simulated environments and experiences can never give us the sense of wonder and satisfaction that life in the real world can – and everyone longs for that rush of feeling truly alive.
So is that little Arp-like character trundling up and down that rainbow corridor with clouds on its back, not perhaps a subtle swipe at the very technology that we are employing in this very endeavour? I merely ask, for whether one wants to analyze it or not, Another Ordinary Afternoon still delivers as a simple diversion from the monotony we have come to entrap ourselves within.
Michael Tweed
3 Comments:
M. Tweed is quite right to emphasise the fragility of Another Ordinary Afternoon; its frangibility, and its adroit awkwardness, are spurring. I would suggest another register, another set of inquiries and critiques at work in the piece: Kasai not only engages the aleatory, she unearths [ahem] the ways in which the natural is mediated by artificial / artefactual and vice versa. It is an old argument, which one dates from Engels's work on the evolution, adaptation, and articulation of the hand ['The hand is not only the organ of labour, it is the product of labour' (see The Origins of Private Property, Family, and the State); similarly, in 1844, Marx notes the intrication of the human sensorium and the 'environment': "The forming of the five senses is the entire labour of the history of the world down to the present"]. Indeed, one might consider the evidence of her hand --- the remarkable perspectives, the shifts in focus, the rough-cut material --- as the mark of an intervention in debates about production. When clouds are produced --- using what seems to me a chaotic and rather 'unproductive' Fordism --- we recognise the thinning borders between the natural and the humanmade; when labyrinthine, seemingly functionless cities are constructed of cardboard, we are urged to see the artificial as the repository, the entrepot, of the human; and when we are asked to recognise the melancholy repetition of our Arp-like worker, it is clear that producing the natural [the clouds that ballast the sky] is alienating. In the ways in which our quotidian has come to plenum with artefacts, and the ways in which they occlude the very labour required for their production, Kasai insists on a form of anamnesis: remember, she cautions, that which seems natural results from the dehiscence of the human.
I appreciate your comments.
I spent over two years developing the models used in the animation. I wasted a lot of cardboard and probably a lot of my time. For every "shooting" I get a heavy muscle ache all over my body because "shooting" for me is basically "squatting" for 9 to 10 hours a day; for several weeks. I move the objects a little, get back to the camera and press the shutter button, and then go back to move the objects again, and so on. The process is simply long and repetitive. When I am in the process, I do not think about the process. If I think about the process it means commitment. I am a sculptor and I commit myself, hesitantly, to the labor required for animation.
Several years back when I worked on my last real sculptural work, I basically ruined my right arm by using a chain-saw and grinder too intensively for a deadline. The moment I finished it, or was close to finishing it, I dropped my grinder... I could not grab anything, anymore. This lasted for a few weeks with fear of permanent damage. It was probably the dumbest thing I did to myself. It proved nothing but my own physical limitation.
Regardless, the work tuned out to be something I could be proud of. I learned my lesson in a rather difficult way. There was no easy or instant way to make something. Popping out ideas is not too difficult but to actualize them is only possible with the labour of hands. The hands shape and form ideas at the unconscious level. The material forms itself; not necessarily in a predictable way. Not all processes can be calculated and the hands have to deal with this all the way through. The story comes later. I know the process of material struggle seems redundant and is easily dismissed, but I kind of enjoy these old-fashioned processes, after all.
Artist's Talk Durham Art Gallery August 26, 2005
Michael Tweed:
Reflecting upon Another Ordinary Day I am reminded of the work of Thomas Demand who creates elaborate incredibly real-looking sets and environments out of paper, which he then photographs. The resulting photographs look as true to life as possible, with disconcerting results. As with Demand’s sets, inherent in the complexity of Shié’s work is a fragility and simplicity which arises from the basic and flimsy materials she uses. Shié employs sophisticated digital technology in order to render an incredible frailty as evidenced by the wispy baby clouds being sent out into the sky. She has created this very fragile, very little thing and then used all these elaborate concepts and technology to render it. It is as if she has taken Cubism a step farther: instead of merely presenting an object from multiple angles, she has stretched these views out through time. By wedding hi-tech and lo-tech strategies she has created a rather sophisticated perceptual scheme, while artfully balancing it with a simple and very enjoyable narrative.
Shie Kasai:
First I would like to thank Michael and Geoffrey for selecting my work to be part of this exhibition. I would also like to thank them for inviting me to Durham for it has been a very enjoyable visit.
I moved to Montréal from Sapporo, Japan in 1998. My formal art practice involves creating installations and animation, my background however is in rather traditional sculpture: the labour-intensive carving of large blocks of wood and the like. My work has been shown in Tokyo, as well as in Montreal. I have also done a web-based project for Gallery One in Ottawa. I have also been collaborating with some other artists to create site specific interactive installations in public libraries in Montreal and Sherbrooke.
Another Ordinary Afternoon is a work of stop-frame animation. First I built a model. This part of the process alone is very time-consuming and labour intensive, yet once the model is completed, I must yet set up my digital camera and take thousands of still images.
I started using this method after moving to Montreal. I worked on several experimental animation projects in which I attempted to visualise the process of making sculpture versus the process of viewing. As this is a rather complicated premise, I am not sure I can adequately explain it, but basically though sculpture is a three-dimensional object, it is only consciously recognized as 3D when presented from multiple angles. Only once one has compiled all the data from these various angles is the sculpture mentally reconstructed and recognised as being in three dimensions. So this is how I began to create my sculptures: not only in physical space but stretched out through an alternative space, namely time. The various viewpoints and perspectives of the sculpture being captured and then presented stretched across a timeline.
I like animation works by the Brothers Quay and other masters of the genre. I especially like the way they create space in a tangible manner; it is almost like looking at a theatre set, and one can easily imagine how the set was created. Also the mechanics of its creation are very simple and so its interpretation largely depends upon the viewer’s own imagination. We are presented the work, but it is our own ability to perceive and interpret it that allows us to enjoy the illusion.
The other thing I like about stop-frame animation is its physicality. Though I occasionally employ more sophisticated techniques, I enjoy the physical interaction and activity required to create animation using the simpler, cruder techniques of stop-frame. This process is more real, and by implication more satisfying, for me.
The use of a webspace for my art projects is a new experience for me. There is still much that I must investigate and think about in regards to it. I do however like the fact that such virtual space allows the potential of presenting a work in more varied locations, and that I do not have to lug my tools and materials from my studio to a gallery. Once I have created a work it can easily be sent to curators like Michael and Geoffrey who then make it available for viewing almost the world over. Another interesting point in this regard is that unlike traditional works of art, web-based art can exist exactly the same at multiple terminals at the same time. Compared to the traditional models, art of this type is modular and accessible in a unique way,. Unless one is fortunate enough to view a traditional artwork in actuality, one’s experience of it only comes through documentation and scaled reproductions. However, art made to be disseminated over the internet allows one to see, for all intents and purposes, an exact copy of the original.
The origin of this work is somewhat unique in that it was only after I had built the sets, the industrial landscape, and shot all the footage that I even considered a narrative script. I made sketches of the sets, character etc. and began shooting without a script or any real idea of how it would all be put together. Though it may be hard to believe I did not even come up with the notion of a cloud factory until I was done shooting and began to confront the challenge of editing all the footage. I had clear ideas of how I wanted each space to look and my primary concern was translating this physical environment, therefore the various scenes were dictated by the angles and perspectives they each required to convey all the information necessary for a viewer to recreate their three-dimensionality. Each model is limited and so there were only so many angles I could shoot from, the stairwell for example only allows two shots: the figure going down and the figure coming up. The rainbow corridor arose from my desire to create a seemingly infinite space using the simplest of means. To do this I glued together coloured popsicle sticks and arranged them, on the dining room table, in a line approximately one and a half inches apart. The end result being a paradoxical image in which it is difficult to perceive the real depth of the space as it appears as both flat and in deep perspective. Once I had exploited all the angles for a particular model, I would move on to the next model, continuing like this until all possible angles had been captured on video. Only then did I consider editing and the creation of any sort of narrative was merely an afterthought dictated by the footage I had already shot.
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