Bruce Bickford Tom mi Brem, Nicholas Garaas (Hrsg.)
HERR BICKFORD ENTDECKT EIN NEUES LAND Erstausgabe Mai 2017
Satz und Umschlaggestaltung besorgte Tom mi Brem. Gesetzt aus der Bickford (von Bruce Bickford). Fotografien: Conne, van d‘ Grachten Mit Textbeiträgen von Bruce Bickford, Tom mi Brem, Nobuaki Doi, Nicholas Garaas, Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais ISBN 978-3-946423-98-0 Alle Rechte bleiben vorbehalten. Ohne schriftliche Genehmigung des Verlags darf kein Teil des Werkes in irgendeiner Form wiedergegeben, vervielfältigt und verbreitet werden. www.topalian-milani.de
INHALT / CONTENT
GOD IS NOT MAD von Tom mi Brem
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INTERVIEW Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais
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BRUCE BICKFORD LIEBT ALLES von Nobuaki Doi
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HERR BICKFORD ENTDECKT EIN NEUES LAND / MR BICKFORD DISCOVERS A NEW LAND Fotos / Photos: Conne van d‘ Grachten
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GOD IS NOT MAD by Tom mi Brem
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INTERVIEW Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais
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BRUCE BICKFORD LOVES EVERYTHING by Nobuaki Doi
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BRUCE BICKFORD Biografie / Biography
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FILME / FILMOGRAPHY
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MEETING BRUCE von / by Nicholas Garaas
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a little kid, when I was about six or seven years old, I saw the first Disney version of Peter Pan, the animated version. I was just transported into that realm, I‘d never seen anything like it. As a little kid you are very impressionable. I‘ve seen that movie a few times since and there is a lot of things I don‘t like about it, I think some of it is very manipulative. The Captain Hook figure I think was very brilliantly done, and the colours and a lot of things about it. Disney was very tasteful in a lot of ways, very sensitive to the colour spectrum and everything it takes to make something visual. And I was really strongly influenced by that and that kind of story where the good characters are the little ones, the more helpless ones, but they manage to get by. Are there any other key films that have inspired you? I‘ve seen a few things like King Kong, I‘ve seen that almost twenty times and that has some of the best stop motion animation ever done. Willis O‘Brien, the animator, was probably the best. Ray Harryhausen, I love his stuff, but it didn‘t have the same feeling that you got from King Kong, the real identity of the creature, very human. Stop motion animation is something where you can see the character of the animator in it because of their personal style, there is always in almost all stop motion animation a kind of a jittery quality, frame by frame there are little bits of imprecision and so it tells you that it‘s not real but that‘s what‘s interesting about it. There are some stop motion animations lately, done by Laika studios, Henry Selick and that crew, and it looks an awful lot like digital animation, very smooth and slick. I mean, it would be hard for me to tell some of that from digital animation, from totally computer-generated stuff, even though it is solid armature models.
So, it kind of loses something maybe when it becomes too perfect? Well, for me it does. There are modern techniques of animation and modern styles that are a little too fast for me, everything goes by too fast. I like to savour the moment and understand what‘s actually happening. Are there other animators that you take inspiration from? I don‘t really see much as I‘ve been working on these graphic novels and before that all the animation, the way I do it with the amount of detail I try to put into things it just takes all my time. I don‘t have a TV set up for watching things and I don‘t have cable. Generally I don‘t watch much TV, except when I was on that trip to Germany a couple of weeks ago to do that museum exhibit. There was a TV in the place and for ten days I watched some TV, I caught up on a few movies, I got a glimpse of a few modern movies and most of it is not for me, it is not the kind of entertainment I like. Generally I don‘t see much animation because I don‘t look for it and I don‘t have time for it, if I am going to get anything done. I have to work.
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About Nobukai Doi Nobuaki Doi is the President and CEO of distribution company New Deer and Festival director of New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival, the only film festival held inside an airport building. Doi is also an organizer of an animation festival called GEORAMA held irregularly in Tokyo. He just published a book based on his doctoral thesis: Personal Harmony: Yuri Norstein and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Animation.
The animation of Bruce Bickford is complicated and overwhelming. What happens on screen is not particularly enigmatic. Rather, it’s obvious. Human figures and faces grow bigger and then are shrunk or destroyed... It’s very simple and apparent. No hidden secrets. Bickford himself says that his work is pure entertainment. Yes, every single episode in his films is entertaining like a car chase, like an exciting and bloody battle; endless metamorphosis, naked ladies, blood, and dismembered bodies ... all motifes you‘ll find in B movies. Then what makes his films so overwhelming? Maybe because too many things are happening. Watching Bruce Bickford’s films is like watching dozens of action movies and horror films at the same time. You can‘t follow everything. This is where Bickford’s animation deviates from the theory of animation. Usually, animators try to manipulate the audience’s reactions considering on what their eyes follow on a screen. Then you don’t need to animate too much. This is the principle all kinds of animation follow, from Disney to Norman McLaren. Bickford’s films resist this basic rule of animation. Bickford makes everything move and the audience can‘t keep track. It‘s beyond their capacity. Even Bickford himself sometimes can‘t follow everything, at least with words. When I visited his house in Seattle, Bickford tried to explain the story of a graphic novel he was making while showing me some actual drawings. At a certain point, he missed the plot because too many things were happening in one drawing. He gave up explaining. Why does his work animate too much? There should be a reason. I curated the two small exhibitions in Japan from 2015 to 2016 and he himself came to Japan for the first time in his life (ex-
cept a short visit to the Okinawa Islands when he was in the Marine during the Vietnamese war). On the very first day in Tokyo, we took Bickford to the observatory of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office, which is 202 meters high. When looking down at the night view of the city of Tokyo, he seemed stunned. Then he asked me a question: “How many people are living in Tokyo?” When he heard my answer (“it’s about 13 million“), he shook his head softly and said, "I can‘t imagine.“ After a long silence, he said that he would like to return to the hotel because it was too much for him. It was already over his capacity. Then I realized that Bickford tried to imagine the existence and life of each and everyone of these 13 million people. Doing such a thing should leave you stunned and confused. It’s beyond the capacity of anyone. You don’t need to (or shouldn’t) do this, but he does. Then I vaguely started to understand why his animations told too many things at the same time. The reason is very simple. It’s the way how the world in front of us is. Then I wondered why I was not as confused as he was, although looking at the same scenery with him. The reason is also simple. I ignored. I didn’t see or imagine everything. On a Japanese website, there was an interview with Bickford held in 2015 (unfortunately, the site is closed now and the article has disappeared). In this article, Bickford said he remembered his childhood memories very well because he had very little socializing in his life. Everyone else would forget about the details of the daily life in their childhood because people usually meet various people and will repeatedly be exposed to new experiences. Bickford, however, remembers because he does not have new experiences. In that sense, Bickford’s eyes are like children‘s eyes. When he goes to a place he never went to before, everything should
BRUCE BICKFORD LOVES EVERYTHING
look fresh and new like a child seeing snow or the sea for the first time. Even the ordinary and mundane can be overwhelming for him. Bickford takes everything in without a filter. That’s why everything moves in the art of Bickford. The world itself is beyond human capacity.
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of the world. Whenever I realize that, everything before me seems ambiguous and the world becomes a big mystery. It is a comfortable feeling, though. It is like the world as a whole opens up before me for the first time in my life. Nobuaki Doi, February 2017
In the swirling protoplasmic flow of the constant transformation, his works reflect the fact that the world is complex and overwhelming. The endless morphing in Bruce’s animation is realistic because the world is constantly changing. You can even say his animation is literally recording the world. After Tokyo, Bickford also visited Takamatsu city for his exhibition at Takamatsu Media Art Festival. The weather was fine on the last day of our stay so we went to see the Seto Inland Sea near the venue Takamatsu Castle. All the conversation we had there was like this: “Bruce, there is a brown lighthouse.” “I cannot see it because my eyes are bad.” “Bruce, the smell is very salty, isn’t it?” “I have no sense of smell because I’m sick...” At the end of this unfruitful conversation, I asked him one more question: “Bruce, do you like the sea?” Then he answered, “I like everything.” I was stunned for a moment. Looking at him going back to the taxi (it was very cold), I almost cried. Bruce can love everything. I can‘t. I never see everything. What I see is only a tiny fragment
BRUCE BICKFORD
Bruce Bickford kam am 11. Februar 1947 zur Welt und wuchs mit seinen Eltern George und Audrey Bickford, sowie mit seinen drei Brüdern auf. Als er 12 oder 13 Jahre alt war, entdeckte er, inspiriert auch von den Filmen eines Ray Harryhausen, seine Leidenschaft für Knetanimationen. Er begann damit zu experimentieren, spielerisch zunächst, doch bereits mit enormer Fantasie. Im Jahr 1964 erwarb Bruce seine erste 8m m Filmkamera und kombinierte seine Passion für Knete mit einer Trickfilmtechnik, die Knetanimation genannt wird. Was mit einfachen, beinahe unbeholfenen Filmen begann, entwickelte sich schnell zu Projekten, die sich durch eine fast obsessive Liebe zum Detail auszeichnen, gepaart mit surreal-assoziativen Geschichten. Es ist diese Kombination, die seine Arbeiten so einzigartig und gleichzeitig so inkompatibel mit dem Mainstream machen. 1965 machte er seinen Abschluss an der Tyee High School und 1966 meldete er sich zum Militärdienst. Drei Jahre, bis 1969, war er bei den Marines und diente ein Jahr im Vietnamkrieg. Nach dem Militär widmete sich Bickford wieder der Kunst, nun mit einer 16m m Kamera ausgerüstet. Er betätigte sich fortan auch auf den Gebieten des Zeichentrick, der "Cel“-Animation und der "Cutout“-Animation. Bruce Bickford ist Autodidakt und selbstständig in dem Sinne, dass er meist alleine an Projekten und Geschichten arbeitet, die er auch selbst konzipiert. Was einen enormen Einfluss auf den Umfang seines Schaffens hat, denn der hohe Detailgrad und die aufwendige Tricktechnik, bei pro Filmsekunde zwölf individuelle Einzelbilder aufgenom men werden, verschlingen Unmengen an Zeit. Dass er seine ihm eigene Art der sich ständig verwandelnden Figuren und Szenerien nach und
nach perfektionierte, beschleunigte den Prozess zwar, allerdings wurden seine Projekte auch im mer komplexer und umfangreicher. Der amerikanische Musiker und Komponist Frank Zappa erkannte Bickfords Talent schon sehr früh. Cal Schenkel, der zahlreiche Plattencover für Zappas Bands und Zeichentricksequenzen für dessen Video-Opus "200 Motels“ (1971) gestaltet hatte, stellte die beiden im Jahr 1973 einander vor. In den darauf folgenden Jahren schuf Bickford eine beachtliche Menge an Animationen für Zappa, Material, das in zahlreichen Zappa-Filmen veröffentlicht wurde, zum Beispiel im Bickford-Video "The Amazing Mr. Bickford“ (1987). Seine Arbeit mit Frank Zappa machte ihn zu einer Kultfigur in dessen Fan-Gemeinde, deren Mitglieder auch heute noch diejenigen sind, die seine Arbeit am ehesten kennen. Viele bezeichnen ihn als den Vater des Genres der Musikvideos und als einen Pionier auf dem Gebiet der Knetanimation. Bezeichnungen, die Bickford allerdings ablehnt: "Ich mache einfach nur Trickfilme.“
"Monster Road“, ebenfalls produziert von Brett Ingram, und weil Bickford auf zahlreichen Festivals auftrat und nach jahrzehntelanger Arbeit einen weiteren Trickfilm fertigstellte: "Cas‘l‘". Galerien und Kulturinstitutionen auf der ganzen Welt haben damit begonnen, seine Arbeit zu präsentieren und einer wachsenden Fangemeinde, darunter auch junge Animationskünstler, zugänglich zu machen.
1981 kehrte Bruce in seine Heimatstadt zurück, begann mit der Arbeit an verschiedenen Filmprojekten und der Entwicklung eigener Drehbücher. Ganze sieben Jahre später stellte er dann einen 28-minütigen Animationsfilm mit dem Titel "Prometheus‘ Garden“ fertig, gedreht auf 16m m. "Der Film mit seiner verwirrend schnellen, bizarren, morbiden und nahezu unbeschreiblichen, unbarmherzig auf den Betrachter einstürmenden Bilderflut begeisterte Kritiker, Trickfilmexperten und Fans. Und alles von Bickford erschaffen aus schier unendlich wallenden Formen aus Knete“, so der Regisseur Brett Ingram. Seit 2004 steigt das Interesse an Bickford und seinen Arbeiten, nicht zuletzt dank der mehrfach preisgekrönten Dokumentation
Diese Kurzbiografie basiert auf einer Langfassung, die Peter Blecha für Bickfords Website verfasst hat.
BRUCE BICKFORD
Bruce Bickford, born in Seattle on February 11, 1947, grew up with his parents George and Audrey Bickford and his three brothers. At the young age of 12 or 13, Bickford, inspired by the movies of Ray Harryhausen, among others, got heavily into clay, experimenting with the material in a playful, yet highly imaginative manner. In 1964, Bruce got his first 8-m m movie camera and started combining his passion for clay with a stop-motion animation technique called clay ani-mation. What started out as simple, almost crude films would soon develop into projects characterized by an almost obsessive attention to detail paired with surreal stream-of-consciousness stories. It is this combination that makes his work both so unique and so incompatible with mainstream culture. After graduating from Tyee High School in 1965, he joined the U.S. Marines in 1966 and served until 1969, serving one year in Vietnam. Out of the military service, Bickford returned to his art, now equipped with a 16-m m camera, adding line-animation, cel-animation, and paper-cutout-animation techniques to his portfolio. Bruce Bickford is not only self-taught but pretty much self-reliant in the sense that he almost always works alone, on projects and stories he devises himself. Which has a profound influence on his output, as the painstaking detail of his work combined with the time-consuming method of recording twelve individual frames for each second of film simply requires a lot of time. Perfecting and streamlining his trademark morphing and reshaping techniques helped speed up the process, but only a little, because at the same time his settings seem to have gotten more and more elaborate.
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American musician and composer Frank Zappa recognized Bruce‘s talent early on. Cal Schenkel, a long-time Zappa collaborator who created a number album covers and animation work on Zappa‘s opus magnum “200 Motels” (1971) introduced the two in 1973 and Bruce went on to produce a remarkable amount of work for Zappa, work that was published in a whole number of Zappa-videos, including the Bickford showcase “The Amazing Mr Bickford“ (1987). His work for Zappa did make him a cult-figure in the Zappa com munity, whose members are still among those to most readily recognize his work. He has also been called the father of the music video genre and a pioneering creator of clay animation. Titles he outright rejects: "I‘m just an animator.“ Returning to his home in 1981, Bruce went on to start production on a large amount of work, and he also started developing original story lines. Seven years later, he finally released a clay-feature, titled “Prometheus‘ Garden”, a 28minute stop-motion film shot on 16-m m. "The film proceeded to blow the minds of critics, animation experts, and fans with its unrelenting onslaught of bewilderingly fast-paced, bizarre, morbid, yet nearly indescribable imagery - all created by Bickford out of almost-infinitely undulating forms of clay.“ Says director Brett Ingram. Since 2004, interest in Bickford‘s work has continued to grow, aided by the award winning documentary “Monster Road”, produced by Brett Ingram, and by Bruce making an appearance at festivals and completing his feature “Cas‘l‘”, which took decades to make. Galleries and other venues in the USA and around the world have started exhibiting his work, making it accessible for a growing crowd, including younger animators.
This short bio is based on the a longer version that Peter Blecha wrote for Bruce Bickford‘s website.