Cute Voids

Voidvideo Episode 1.
This project stems from a suspicion that the proliferation of cutesy animals in pop culture is somehow intimately connected with the parallel extinction of wild animals in complex ecosystems. Further, I propose that as greeting card ornaments, cutesy animals not only approximate and supplant (for example) real tigers, bears, and monkeys- but are also used to approximate and supplant real complex feelings of longing, grief, and love.

My fieldwork is two-fold. On one front, I have collected specimens of cutesy animals from their natural habitats: the local dollar store and specialist niche sites on the internet. The specimens are carefully extracted from You're a Purr-Fect Valentine and Happy Birthday, Nephew contexts, and prepared for introduction into the wilds. Meanwhile, to document the wilds, I have set out on foot into the forests around Sewanee. (Some of these places, such as the Lake Dimmick frontiers of proposed real estate development, are themselves in danger of disappearance.)

The Animal Voids are natural landscapes populated by ersatz animal erasures, which disrupt any possibility of direct experience of the wilderness, or of the various real creatures inhabiting it. Phantom poodles, kitties, and bunnies pair off in void dances, ruining the pristine promise of the woods. I intend these images to be disquieting and funny, portraits of mediated, distracted consciousness in endangered places.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Puttgen
• papercutting
• scherenschnitt
• Sewanee
• animals

[funnny141]

this sux so much, doesnt help me with my hw