FILM

Len Lye’s film Tusalava, an animation made of five thousand single drawings, is a study in morphology. It demonstrates that animated film always contains a contagious exchange of sensorial becomings on the “pre-logical” level. The mutating cellular shapes in the film slowly give rise to an enigmatic protoplasmatic scenario from which more distinct shapes emerge, resembling the penetration of a body by a virus, with this body being reminiscent of “totemic” imagery. Influenced by aboriginal art, Tusalava is a primitivist work of sorts, while expressing the fundamental animistic qualities of its medium through its imagery. (Edwin Carels)