In this post I would like to talk about an Austrian animation, analyzing its technique and compare it with my previous post of an Iranian animation. They are both done around 7 years ago roughly at the same time.
brats (Extended Play) | Alexander Hengl | 00:10:00 | 2013
From the website http://www.asifa.at/bestaustriananimation/
The „brats“ seem like a tribe of excited and sexless creatures connected through a collective spirit. Instead of using the classic storytelling format, artist/musician Alexander Hengl, member of „theclosing“, offers impressions that trigger subliminal emotions with this music-driven short.
Animation, Music, Editing: Alexander Hengl
Produced at: Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna – www.akbild.ac.at
http://alexanderhengl.theclosing.net | www.lichenisierung.net
The philosophy about thinking and analyzing individuals comes from the Europe. Austria is specially famous for it due to its famous psychologist Freud.
As a middle eastern, it was also a big culture shock for me to see how people analyze individuals specially themselves. In the middle eastern culture it is not common to say the word “I” or use the sentence “I want something” very often. It is mostly said through a group or asking the others if they also want the same thing, and out of the result we say “We wanted”or some times “I wanted”.
This animation also focuses on individuals and showing them in a group and again individuals, their feeling, fears, characters etc.
However previous Iranian animation was mostly based on a narrative about a family and how dependent the members are on one another. It did not analyze every individual very exactly.
In the Iranian animation, the grey color was also used but in combination with red, blue and other lively traditional colours which are also used in the Persian carpet. Sound design was mostly dependent on traditional Kurdish music.
Both these animations are dealing with personal questions, relationships among people in the society, different happenings and their effect on people, however in two very different styles. We as the audience can understand the message behind both of them and learn something new about the new culture and their way of thinking and perception of arts and life.
