Artist statement

Presented together for the first time anywhere, The Gods of Tiny Things and its sequel, For Creation, are collaborative collage animations that together invoke and cherish the dancing, whirling, erotic energies of life on a planet in peril.

The Gods of Tiny Things is an experimental collaborative animation made on unceded Yuin Country. At collage camp in Southern NSW, we dreamt and brought into being personifications of our fears, of failures and wounds, of impossible appetites roaring with hunger. Over a week of study, research, play and practice, we conjured heralds of grief and warning, using obsolete images cut from old journals and encyclopaedias. The film thinks about the tolls of colonialism, climate catastrophe, human profligacy; and conversely the dynamic, kaleidoscopic pleasures and desires of life itself, in all its teeming, prancing, hectic, clamouring fertility.

For Creation contemplates the glittering webs enveloping matter and sentience. Combining ardent queerness, elegy and homage, For Creation is an animated paper collage constructed from the ruins of abandoned books. Collagists studied SJ Norman’s glorious Liturgy of the Saprophyte, the new sacred literature at the heart of the CREATION religion, and their resulting artworks form figure and field. Musical collaborators and queer dancefloor legends Stereogamous composed the anthemic soundtrack, featuring the voices of SJ Norman and emerging popstar Lupa J.

Words spoken in the film, For Creation

Timecode / Text
00:56 For those who have known deprivation
01:00 We drink
01:08 We feast
01:16 We warm ourselves
01:24 We rest
01.32 We offer our delight
01.40 We move to restore that which has been stolen
02.00 So be it, see to it
(x8)
02.48 We who are born of burning empires
02.54 We travel, as smoke must
02.57 Forever skywards, perfumed with resins
03.04 We who claim the title of heretic, of dissident, of faggot, of savage, of witch
03.14 For no fire can harm those
03.19 who are born in flames
03.25 so be it, see to it (repeats)
Then singing voice repeats So be it, see to it