Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Perfect City The Bravest Kid’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
I am currently working on an on going animation and multi media series called Perfect City. There will be 5 episode in total. Each episode focuses on a certain specific materials in our daily life but converted into animation to reflect my dreams, memories, and trauma. Perfect City: The Bravest Kid is the second episode of the series. Before this episode I made the first episode Perfect City: The Mother, using tree barks, branches, dry flowers to touch the theme of motherhood.
It all started with my nightmares. One night I had a nightmare where I found myself lying in the cave with cracks on the wall. Something wet started to grow inside my belly and it came out just like the birth of the Alien. After it was born, my body dried out. I can feel the tiredness, desperate, and anger towards that moment. But there were lots of voices coming along with the wind, whispering “You should take care of your kid!”. I felt guilty and horrified and I started to convince myself that I need to love that thing. During the process of struggling between love and hate, embrace and escape, I finally convert all the emotions into controlling actions towards that thing. And I made that thing into “my kid”.
I woke up and I decided to document this dream and convert it into the first episode of the series since I think it contains the disturbing feeling I want to explore towards the materiality. And I projected my emotions into the contrast between dryness and wetness and construct it into the narration of storytelling.
I make films based on my unconscious choice. I like taking photos with the camera and I like watch frames being animated through the process of connecting frames together with a frame rate. I think I unconsciously making animation by creating something organic and giving them to life with the form of animation. Because I feel exciting when I use animation as a medium to bring consciousness into objects and materials. One can’t be “god”, but through the form of animation, one can be the portal to feel the existence of “god”.
Tell us about ‘Perfect City The Bravest Kid’. How do you describe it?
Perfect City: The Bravest Kid is a mirror from another perspective of Perfect City: The Mother. The main characters in The Bravest Kid and The Mother are two sides of my personalities. I projected my indifference and coldness into the mother and I projected my sensitivity and fragility into the kid. Both two episodes are exploring my psyche mental world and I have to say I am afraid to face with myself sometimes especially I found it really hard to face with the emotions in my nightmares. So I chose to make these two episodes because I need to find a way to convert my feelings in my nightmares into something I can view from outside of my body.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
I like Micheal Haneke. His films are honest and cruel. I also like Ingmar Bergman. I like the way he always built up so many different emotional layers for his characters. I also like Apichatpong Weerasethakul since he pays so much attention to the sound and how sound could be a portal for the audience to feel more and be more spiritual and intuitive.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
A good budget sometimes could give birth to a bad project. Money is not a good trigger to create inspiring art at least in my perspective. Plenty budget means plenty of burden and responsibilities, but sometimes art creation is a selfish process, at least for me.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
I used to ensure the production of my animation is on schedule but it leads to a really rigid and boring work in the end. So I started to just let it go. I try to enjoy the “endless” process of making art since it is a constant growing process. Currently I am working with ceramics and I realize every step you make in ceramics is facing with the unknown. On schedule is the way to avoid unknown and make the unknown become certain things. But I think creating art is a process of constantly facing towards unknown.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Perfect City The Bravest Kid’.
I was not pure honest to myself when making the first two episodes because at that time I was still afraid of facing towards more dark sides of myself. I depressed my desire and darkness for a long period of time that I had to build up some persona to function as some safe shells for me to hide. For these two episodes those shells are mainly genre film story structures and some existed story points. The hardest part of making The Bravest Kid is balancing the coward part of myself facing towards unknown, and the intuitive part of my art making.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
I am currently making ceramics and I think ceramics is a great medium for me to be more brave towards the unknown. Because when I touch the clay, I forget to think but only immerse myself into the emptiness. I like how the hollowness of the ceramics contains the process of this interaction. So the process of making ceramics inspires the future episodes of the series. It will be Perfect City: The Mushroom, Perfect City: The Shell and Perfect City: The Room. They will be more intuitive and abstract. And The future episodes will step out of the traditional storytelling comfort zone and expand into the structures based on materials themselves.
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