Lj Harris
Pigeon View
I’ve always been fascinated with the process of deconstruction and reconstruction in building new self-contained worlds that tell a number of separate narratives. The idea that we are all interconnected through communities yet so isolated as individuals has been the main drive for this work.
The animated film is a response to observing both filmatic and genuine city scenes, sourcing mostly repetitive action from various media, breaking it down frame by frame and then reconstructing the frames through drawing, before elaborating digitally. Using separate layers, all of which have a drawn element, allows for complete control from conception to delivery.
There’s a nurturing to the process of watching an animated component that ends up playing out within seconds, develop over days and weeks before finding its anchor in the built imagined world. Each frame is slightly different from the last but completely redrawn, elevating the value of individuality within a crowd of the same.
The looped film examines the role of the observer as a critical witness to semi-nonsensical or unexplained events, in a pool of otherwise mundane activity. This ominous, constantly moving city playing out on loop instils a feeling of unease. Much like the real world, it can be quite hard to keep track of so much moving detail, and clock whether action is unusual or humdrum. There’s a challenge in knowing what to pay attention to - essentially the scene is one of organised chaos. The work delights in incongruity.
