Semester 2- Week One: Nathalie Djurberg's 'Claymations'

1. What do you understand by the word 'claymation'?

- Claymation, or Clay animation is is the art of making clay figures move, talk, sing, dance or whatever your imagination wants it to do!
Using stop motion photography or like we did, a series of still pictures taken with a digital camera, the frames are then run together to produce an animation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymation#Claymation

2. What is meant by the term 'surrealistic Garden of Eden'? and 'all that is natural goes awry'?

- Garden of Eden is a garden covered with creepy flowers. They are so big they dwarf visitors, their colors and shape are exotic and sinister. Sun never lights up the garden, it’s so dark .It looks like a dark fairy tale with many irreatity shapes and colors , which effect into our sensuousness. What is unusual here? I think that Garden of Eden is much more gloomy and creepy by a difference by generally acknowledged notion for Garden of Eden. I would say that this one can scares you and provoke your imagination.

3. What are the 'complexity of emotions' that Djurberg confronts us with?

- It makes us feel uncomfortable, confused and provoke out feeling for fear. A music composed by Hans Berg contributes to the uncomfortable atmosphere. On the screens, three merciless and erotic stop-motion animations. One tells the story of a puppet who battles her own aggressive limbs. The second one features puppets who resort to all sort of brutishness in order to escape a hostile forest environment and the third one follows the sexual foreplay of various puppets, some of them Catholic ecclesiastics. Their sexual and sacrilegious encounters are just pretexts to highlight perverse games of power and submission.


4. How does Djurberg play with the ideas of children's stories, and innocence in some of her work?

- Djurberg play with the ideas of children’s stories using the image of little girls who are looking “innocent” attacked by villains.

5. There is a current fascination by some designers with turning the innocent and sweet into something disturbing. Why do you think this has come about?

- Artist are trying to create fascination by turning something sweet and innocent into something disturbing. In this way they are shocking and confusing people which make the artists more popular.

6. In your opinion, why do you think Djurberg's work is so interesting that it was chosen for the Venice Biennale?

- I think that work is interesting because it’s shocking and surprising ,The Garden of Eden with meaty-looking flowers and films in which animated clay figures perform violent and sexual acts in a playful and absurd manner. The viewer is taken to a place of paradoxes almost like a joyful nightmare.

7. Add some of your own personal comments on her work.

- The idea about Eden Garden is shocking and makes me feel scared of the disgusted of the violence but it’s interesting how Djurberg is presenting her work it’s a sort of duality between fairy, innocence and vicious.

Reference

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/6886/nathalie-djurberg-experiment-at-venice-art-biennale-09.html

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/04/there-are-very-very-few.php