You May Own the Lanterns, but We Have the Light
(Ep.1 Home Alone)
You May Own the Lanterns...Ep.1 is a short, black and white film comprised of found cartoons and animations, all re-drawn and re-animated with varying degrees of alterations to the original source material. Drawing from the magic lantern and the evolution of the language and technique of animation, where fantasy and animistic desires, are created through highly rigid and hierarchical modes of production and optical engineering, the diverse found cartoon footage is edited and transformed to paint a picture of a city plunged in darkness, where inhabitants engage in various forms of escapism and confrontation. The plot of the film starts in the guise of a linear narrative where two young adults go out to dance, while a younger child is left behind to devolve into increasingly tempestuous dreams.
*
Now I am a car driving during a blackout. My headlights animate the city, the shadows of its extinguished streetlights dancing on the facades of dilapidated buildings. The city is a processor, organizing the flow of all things living and dead. Pulsating light brings objects to life; everything is in motion. The architecture is smooth, liquid, smart. The city is also a grinding halt, screeching brakes, and burnt tires. It is smashed windows and broken teeth, lockups and lights out. The relationship between artificial light, motion capture, and crowd control is, like so much hard science, phantasmagoria amok. This is a film about the alchemy of light and the rhythms of things made to flow. Here, ghosts chase cops out of town, and labor and leisure shadow one another in elaborate labyrinthine infrastructures.
