Anyone who sees this compilation of fictionally rejected animated shorts by Don Hertzfeldt should be the judge for themselves. There is a thin line between too clever and just pure absurd, and somewhere along that line there lies Rejected. Some might find the very dark humor Hertzfeldt colors his colorless animations with either too funny, way beyond anybody’s appropriate understanding, or just leaving them quite speechless.
With each segment lasting only less than a minute long, apparently Hertzfeldt’s series of fictionally rejected works for a few networks found themselves too similar and artistic-like to wind up into this compilation, with the segments and the characters in them falling apart towards the end due to “(the lack of) meaningful input and lacking any remaining reason or coherent narrative structure”. And so, they literally fell apart.
Perhaps the one thing to obviously give Hertzfeldt credit for is the way these bits and pieces of random animations found their ways into a harmonized collection. Or perhaps, what truly harmonized Hertzfeldt’s animations is the fact that they’re all equally random. Overall, it shouldn’t be said that in spite of everything, Hertzfeldt’s works is anything but without vibrant character. After all, it nominated an Academy Award for Best Animated Short.
Directed by Don Hertzfeldt
Synopsis: A compilation of Hertzfeldt’s rejected animations.
Semua orang memiliki favorit tersendiri, apakah itu di dalam ruang kantor yang sempit, kamar rumah pribadi yang lega, kafe di seberang halte bus, atau mungkin di alam liar. Di mana pun tempatnya, lokasi yang terpilih adalah lokasi yang bagi masing-masing orang paling sakral karena selalu memberi inspirasi yang dibutuhkan untuk memperlancar karya yang sedang dikerjakan. Untuk desainer asal Spanyol, Fernando Abellanas, lokasi sakralnya adalah sebuah studio kecil yang bergantung di kolong sebuah jembatan di kota Valencia.
Abellanas, seorang desainer perabotan dan pencahayaan dengan nama studio Lebrel, membangun ruang kecilnya hanya dalam waktu 2 minggu. Ia memanfaatkan dua balok beton yang ada di bawah jembatan sebagai cara untuk memindahkan ruangan tersebut maju mundur. Di ujung tembok, Abellanas menempelkan rak kayu, kursi, dan sebuah alas dari kayu untuk bekerja.
Selain sebagai ruang kerja, Abellanas menggunakan ruangan ini sebagai persembunyian sakral dari semua kericuhan kota. Tak hanya bekerja, ia juga menyediakan sprei, bantal, guling, dan selimut untuk bekal bermalam. Bahan dan cara pembuatan ruang kecil ini sepertinya berkualitas sangat tinggi, karena bisa menopang berat Abellanas dari pagi hingga malam hingga pagi lagi.
Kemampuannya mengkombinasikan seks dan gaya hidup, pendokumentasian, pornografi dan seni di antara aspek-aspek lainnya, telah menjadikannya sebagai sorotan dunia melalui monografi pertamanya bertajuk Lost Boys pada tahun 2006 lalu. Kini, Slava Mogutin bertekad mengembalikan dan memperbesar sorotan tersebut melalui kompilasi dari karya-karya fotografinya selama tahun 2000 hingga 2015 yang berjumlah 240 buah, Bros & Brosephine, yang akan rilis pada Agustus lalu.
Isu yang disuarakan melalui Bros & Brosephine tidak akan jauh-jauh dari zona nyaman Mogutin selama ini – yang memang terdiri dari hal-hal yang mungkin membuat beberapa pihak kurang nyaman mencernanya – karena seniman kontroversial asal Rusia ini akan kembali bermain dengan terjemahannya atas segala fenomena dalam masyarakat yang sifatnya dinamis, dan atas kemampuan seni mewadahi kreativitas yang bisa dihasilkan dari pemberontakan akibat dinamika tersebut.
Pemberontakan yang dimaksud mungkin adalah terhadap konvensionalitas, mengingat Bros & Brosephine memang akan berisi perpaduan unsur masukulinitas akut yang dipertemukan dengan unsur kenetralan serta sifat ‘mengalir’ dari gender. Sekilas kontradiksi ini mungkin hanya akan menimbulkan kebingungan, namun di sanalah kemampuan Mogutin menangkap kealamian yang sesungguhnya ada di masyarakat tersebut dan membingkainya menjadi santapan menarik dalam Bros & Brosephine akan diuji.
“Saya selalu merasa tertarik akan bahasa tubuh dan unsur maskulinitas, yang seringkali bersinggungan dengan homoerotika dan narsisisme,” ujar Mogutin. Karena itu, mungkin ‘membaca’ bahasa ini menjadi tidak mudah. Namun, bukankah justru esensi dari keberadaan dan renungan kita atas seni visual? Untuk membicarakan hal-hal yang sulit atau bahkan tidak nyaman untuk dibicarakan dengan konformitas biasa?
Naoshima adalah sebuah kota pulau kecil yang harus didatangi di Jepang untuk para seniman kontemporer yang sedang mencari inpirasi atau mungkin untuk para penikmat seni secara umum. Jika setiap kota kecil biasa mempunyai bidangnya sendiri, kekhasan Naoshima adalah galeri seninya. Agar lebih menunjukkan nilai seni dari kota mereka ini, Naoshima bekerja sama dengan studio SANAA untuk membuat sebuah di dalam pelabuhan feri pulau tersebut.
Dipimpin oleh Kazuyo Sejima dan Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA berencana untuk membuat sebuah terminal untuk para turis yang ingin menunggu kapalnya. Di dalam landmark tersebut disediakan tempat duduk, parkir motor, serta kamar kecil. Tetapi selain itu, yang dibuat harus mempunyai tingkat seni arsitektur yang tinggi agar bisa menggambarkan sedikit tentang kota Naoshima kepada para pendatang. Bangunan dengan tinggi 8 meter ini mempunyai bentuk yang terinspirasi dari awan Cumulonimbus. Bentuknya yang unik menurut Sejima dan Nishizawa adalah agar kapal-kapal feri bisa langsung mengenali kota Naoshima dari kejauhan.
Meluncur di atas papan 4 roda dengan jalanan kota, bangunan pemerintah, dan gedung-gedung pembayar pajak sebagai lapangan bermainnya, seorang pemain skateboard tidak akan peduli dengan peraturan kota apa lagi kepada sosok otoritas. Memang adalah kegiatan yang bisa dibilang paling menggambarkan kata-kata seperti dan , tetapi Otherness adalah skateboard yang ingin menjadi pemberotak di dalam dunia penuh pemberontak.
Otherness pertama kali diperkenalkan oleh Trasher “Skater of The Year” 2008, Marc Johnson, lewat akun Instagram-nya, di mana beberapa artwork yang diunggah oleh Johnson mendapatkan pujian dari banyak khalayak. Lewat sebuah wawancara oleh Street Canoe kepada pendiri pertama ini, yakni Thom Hornung dan Mat O’Brian, diketahui bahwa tim lengkapnya termasuk Marc Johnson, Barker Barret, Shannon May, dan Tony Cox.
Belum banyak yang diketahui tentang ini, hanya saja sudah ada beberapa pilihan papan atraktif yang bisa dibeli di situs mereka. Grafik pada papan buatan Otherness memang tergolong berbeda dengan apa yang pada umunya dijual oleh skateboard lain, karena gambar-gambar dan ilustrasi buatan tangan dan pensil di lalu ditempel ke dalam papan berwarna pastel. Ilustrasi yang intens digabungkan dengan warna yang lembut memberikan kontras yang pintar serta menarik di mata. Terlihat seperti ada cerita di dalam setiap gambar yang mungkin sebenarnya kompleks, tetapi daripada dipusingkan lebih baik di sesuaikan saja dengan interpretasi setiap pembelinya.
The designer/DJ, Belda Farika is ready to stomp the dancefloor tonight to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Never Too Disco! We talked to her to reveal her story during her stay in San Francisco and dig deeper about how she got the whole connection to Japan’s finest DJs.
Definitely broaden my knowledge and taste in music and ripped my bank account to “nada” for all those goody records! California party scene was so much different than the party scene in East Coast and Midwest where I used to live before moving to San Francisco. Being exposed to the underground party scene in California was probably one of the best thing that had ever happen to me. It really changed my life and shaped me to the person I have become today.
I remember my cousins took me to see Jeno play at DNA Lounge for the first time and it really got me curious about all these underground parties and the music they played at the party. I didn’t have that many friends back then in San Francisco, so I usually go to party by myself if I’m not with my cousins. I went to Jeno & Garth’s Back 2 Back party at 222 Hyde for the first time and showed up too early at the party. DJ Garth saw me and recognized that I’m Derry’s cousins, so he came up to me and says hello, then he gave me a drink ticket (laugh). I think he felt a bit sorry for me being there to early and not knowing any else there? That’s okay, I had a great time and I made my first few party friends that night!
To me, the radio show was a challenge. When I first started the radio show in 2010, I was in my last year of my master degree program and was going through a lot of changes in my life. At the time, playing records was one of things that I like to do when I’m not in school, working on my thesis or at work. Psychologically it helps me go through many rough patches in my life. So, I just wanted to play records and share the all kinds of music that I’m really into at the moment through the radio show. However, when I listened to the archives of the show again, it felt like there was a lot of feelings involves throughout every single shows. It may sounds cheesy but true. There was some part of it that reminds me the exact feeling I’m having at that exact time when I played on the show. Needless to say, Imaginary Voyage had become a place for me to share not just music but also my personal life journey.
Well…, someone once told me that the music that I played was “too disco” and my first respond in my mind was, “you can never go too disco.” After a short period of time, debating with myself on whether can one be too disco when it comes to music preferences, I found myself in my studio, picking out my favorite disco records and edits (including the cheesiest ones) and was just playing for hours. A few hours later I decided to make a short mixtape and called it Never Too Disco. The mixtape was published on my Mixcloud account in June 2013. In 2014 the mixtape evolved into a small intimate disco party in Jakarta and later on I was lucky enough to do Never Too Disco party in Singapore and Tokyo last year.
Definitely all kinds of disco. Just like any other genre in music, disco has many different sub genre. When I first started this party with Gerhan in 2014, we were playing many kinds of disco music, from balearic disco, electronic disco, cosmic disco to disco rock and everything else in between. So my intention at the party was to not sound the same every hour for the next 4 to 5 hours. Every guest DJs that had played at NTD has their own definition of disco music. I like giving them the freedom to pick and choose their own disco and even mixing it with other tracks from different genre that goes well with disco. To me having all these different sounds creates different energy on the dance floor.
I’m not sure how I ended up knowing all these crazy Japanese guys (laugh). But maybe because I met DJ KASEP? (laugh)
I first discovered Force of Nature from the disco underground scene in California. Their music was one of the ones of many that got me started on buying records. I remember seeing the flyer of Force of Nature at Sarcastic Disco in LA and my thought was, I have to see these guys play at Sarcastic Disco! So I flew to LA, by myself, went to the party and it was one of the best party I have ever been to for as long as I can remember.
When I moved to Jakarta, I met Chida and DJ Kent, they both played at Potato Head on a different times. Then not long after, one of their friend from college, Hikko aka the infamous DJ KASEP, moved to Jakarta to open a new branch of his company. We met and became really good friends and even started a party called Laid Back Sessions (LBS) at Mondo in Kemang. I think this is where I started knowing all these amazing Japanese DJs. I got all starstrucked when I met KZA for the first time in Jakarta because I’m such a big fan of his music!
Before he left Jakarta, I wanted to have him sign one of his records but I can’t picked which one I want him to sign on. So I brought all his records to Tetsuya’s house, where he was staying, there were probably about 10 different records, and asked him to choose whichever he felt like signing on! (laugh) I’m glad to meet all these amazing people and I have to say they are all very humble and fun to hang out with.
I’m really happy to see the progress of the party scene in Jakarta for the last 7 years I’ve been in this town and I am really proud to be a part of it!
No disco, no future!!
Okay that’s enough… I need to get my smoke machine and fake lashes ready for the party tonight! (and I hope the fake lashes made it through the night!)
See you guys at the party!
-
8 September 2017
21:00
the SAFEHOUSE
KZA (Force Of Nature/JP)
Gerhan
Omar
Belda
