Caroline Leaf’s The Street (based on Montreal author Mordecai Richler’s short story) shows montage at work by abolishing the shot-to-shot editing system of continuity. Ink and watercolour on glass does the work. The Street is therefore a performance of remembering. Guido Manuli’s Use Instructions is a series of synecdoche, in hilarious play with the physics of objects, we are dragged down to hell to the final destruction of Earth. Both animation pictures play with the 3-act structure to keep us apace with story-telling for easy comprehension. Two narrative pictograms augment what is just beneath the surface of pleasing imaging, exhibited at The Ventriloquists…Thinking Narratively (4-19 July 2020). 動畫的敘事法花枝招展，起承轉合是借用觀眾熟識的架構安置觀眾，看真是掩眼法。《街道》以水彩的流動取締了傳統分鏡的敘事法，鏡頭接合的文法銷毀，蒙太奇的效果卻豐盈漲滿，記憶的行動成了一場戲。《用家指南》的舉寓令人捧腹大笑，狂笑後往未來看，是希望的滅絕，地球成了渣滓糞便，是誰開始的超級玩笑？
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WAI Fong-ching Cecilia: The Street
A pictogram on Caroline Leaf’s The Street (1976), 90 x 39cm on wall with legend on A3 poster
This is a story of a family. It is a miniature of human relationship. There are only a few dialogues in this story, yet there are various kinds of sound suggesting the neighbourhood activities, the emotions of each character, and the interactions between family members. To emphasize the importance of sounds in this animation picture, I have made a visual soundscape — in the form of a soundwave series. I have used warm colors to create an old and sad feeling. There is a window that stands for a family. At the lower part, lines of sound waves telling the whole story of this family. The sun and moon are the symbolic of time passing. It presents the beginning and the ending, not only of the story, but also of grandma’s life.
ZHANG Zhihui: Instruction: How to Shit the Earth
A narrative pictogram on the animation Use Instructions (1989) by Guido Manuli, printed as poster 55.4 x 180cm hanged longitudinally with magnet on a roll-down blind viewable through the glass from outside the venue
**Watch the animation […]
The 3-minute short film, Use Instructions (1989, Guido Manuli), contains a large amount of information and personal attitudes in an artistic symbolized way. The various “butt” events seem to be parallel, but in fact, they are continually deepening with the narrative while intensifying emotions as well. The vertical and horizontal dimensions of this work are organically connected.
All the icons in my pictogram are inspired and cut-outs from the movie. Spreading out all the information, I want to illustrate the relationships more intuitively and to provoke the viewer’s deeper thinking. The complexity behind human activities lies not only in polluting the environment, but also affecting our own society, culture and humanity.
Zhang Zhihui’s narrative pictogram for animation Use Instructions
