Puppet Animations by Lisa Barcy
Posted by | Conversations at the Edge | Posted on | May 6, 2004
Thursday, May 6, 2004, 8:15pm
Lisa Barcy in person!
Escape is at the center of Lisa Barcy’s dark, if playful, animations. Always looking for the closest exit, her neurotic protagonists – paper cutouts, 3-D puppets, or lumps of moving clay – are prone to leaping without looking first, inviting disaster into their dreamlike worlds. Like a nature documentary from Mars, The Ordovicians (2004) fills the screen with weirdly twitching objects. In the romance-novel inspired Woman Without a Past (2003), the artist’s alter ego is harassed by the single piece of paper she most wants to discard. The Guilt Trip (2003) is a stop-motion road movie starring Jesus and Mary Magdalene, with the Pope in hot pursuit. A dazzling combination of live-action video, Bunraku puppets and animated silhouettes, Mermaid (2004) stretches absurdity to its tragicomic limit, as a marriage of marine biologists is threatened by an eerily fetching giant squid (Jim Trainor). 2003—2004, Lisa Barcy, USA, ca. 70 min, various formats.
About
Conversations at the Edge is a weekly series of screenings, performances, and talks by groundbreaking media artists.
CATE is organized by SAIC's Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and SAIC's Video Data Bank.
Programs take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State / Chicago, IL / 312.846.2600), unless otherwise noted.
