Experimental artist-animator Jodie Mack’s film is a strange, colourful, kaleidoscopic odyssey around the world but with no apparent destination
Here’s a 60-minute cine-essay from the
American experimental artist-animator Jodie Mack, a distinctively trippy travelogue about … well, what? The film might have something to say about globalisation and homogeneity. Or our 21st-century addiction to consuming stuff. Maybe there’s an observation here on cultural appropriation. But with no words or narrative, this hypnotic kaleidoscope of repeated patterns and animation featuring brightly coloured fabrics is all but unclassifiable. Mack is known for working with textiles; and this film, shot on 16mm, is perhaps best described as Koyaanisqatsi with rugs.
The footage has a grabbed-on-the hoof feel, filmed around the world. In a stop-motion scene at the start, a mutinous wheelie case, broken free from a display in a shopping mall, spluts out scraps of fabric. Again in stop-motion, a rug slinks creepily down a flight of stairs: a carpet possessed. Cheapo skirts hang on a stall at an outdoor market. Maps, alphabets, symbols and sheet
music are also recurring motifs – the systems humans use to make sense of the world.