The recent ‘Virtual Worlds’ screening (see below) was part of an exhibition at the Barbican called Surreal House. It’s an expansive exhibition focused on the influence of surrealism on space, and placed in this context its interesting to rediscover some well known films, sculptures and buildings as surrealist explorations.
The collection is huge; I was about to leave when I realised that I had only covered half of the show, and there was another floor above! I never considered myself to be ‘into’ surrealism, but the scope of the exhibition is extremely wide, touching areas that I’d never previously considered to be related to the movement at all. The films were particularly impressive; Jan Švankmajer’s stop motion short Jabberwocky is the most inspirational no-tech effects film I’ve seen for a long time, and I will be shortly stealing all sorts of ideas from it.
The exhibition runs until the 12th of September, I highly recommend it!
1 year ago