Current Projects
Foodie
In collaboration with Fiona Smyth I am currently working on a 35mm animated film project called "Foodie". Foodie is a character who travels through emotional food adventures. Foodie gives us a specific perspective on the junky cityscape that we see every day - an amalgamation of advertisements, litter, businesses and the people that move through it. Dollar stores with rows and rows of useless cheap garbage. Wind swept corners of parking lots gathering gum wrappers, fast food giveaway treats and related chaos. Bus shelters containing posters of ladies in push up bras, beside ads for apartment shares, over top of deserted sleeping bags.
Walking through this world, we imagine the perfect consumer who is simultaneously socially conscious and suspect -- Foodie. Foodie is a character that is funny and sort of sad. Foodie waddles through a world of junk and dollar store detritus made in other countries for Foodie to consume. Consuming but struggling to stay within the boundaries of good and proper, worrying all the time: Do Foodie's clothes fit? Is Foodie too fat? Why is Foodie always hungry? What will people think? Is Foodie making the right choices?
This film considers contemporary social and economic consumption (widely defined) within a surreal, manufactured landscape. We are making costumes, characters and sets that create a world to reflect some of these social and cultural dilemmas. We have utilized our skills as multi-media artists to make costumes, masks, dolls and dioramas that create a dreadful and beautiful hyper-consumer landscape. Via 3D, stop motion, scratch, hand painting, cell and photocopy animation on 35mm film, Foodie will move through a series of fantastical contexts offering observations and experiences. While these fragments are humorous and whimsical, the film provides a critique of consumption. It does this by presenting scenes of domestic life, public shopping practices and Foodie's internal dialogue and struggle. Foodie will grapple with things like the meaning of life, contradictions between politics and the practicality, body image and agency. As two plus-size, feminist, collectors we are well suited to work together on a project that explores these issues. For this project we have received a Chalmers Award, Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council Film Grants and a Production Grant from the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers (LIFT).