Volstok, Hazazah / The Art Dispute / sequences for episodic documentary series / 2D digital animation / Dutch, English / apocryphalia / 2021-2022
See also: Volstok website
Animation at Volstok for a production by Hazazah. The Art Dispute is an 8-episode documentary television series about historical artifacts that have been stolen -across the world and throughout recent centuries- to be put on display in prestigious European museums. Each episode traces back the journey of a particular item, revealing a continuing history of greed, deceit and bloodshed at the hands of Western imperialism. For depicting any historical events (such as the actual theft of the artifacts) the series’ creators wanted to work with animation.
The in-house team of animation veterans at Volstok have been involved with the production from its early stages. They were initially asked to develop an illustrative visual style that wouldn’t be too manipulative towards the viewer. After all, the series’ main intention was (and still is) to open up the debate about rightful ownership in changing times, rather than casting judgement.
However, as the edits of the first episodes advanced it became clear that the series would be at risk of watering down the violent and unjust nature of some events by keeping the animation style too neutral or abstract.
By the time I was brought on board, the Volstok crew had already done a lot of the heavy lifting by pushing their earlier designs and animation tests to the limits and determining what would and wouldn’t work for the evolving tone of the live action part of the series. I was tasked with a complete redesign and animation.
The vision behind the redesign was to avoid subtlety (I now realize I was indeed the right person for this job). We wanted to highlight the brutality of the past, making it confrontational rather than illustrative. Characters are ugly creepy puppets. Colours are flat but intense. There are only pure black hard edge shadows. Everything is covered in a thick dusty layer of grain.
The style intentionally avoids any pretense of realism. It refuses to make up the viewers’ mind for them through any sort of dark pattern. The patterns at work are quite obvious, actually. The truth within these animations is of a mire mythical nature, similar to how it might be experienced in dreams, theatrical performance or folk art. Indeed the traditional visual culture attached to each artifact(1) has greatly informed the animation design.
Other notable influences would be European and American comic book art, expressionist cinema, and post-anime limited animation techniques (2).
All 8 episodes have been completed, broadcast on Dutch television and released for international streaming.
(1) The influence of culture-specific traditional art on Art Dispute’s animation style happened on two levels. That of the artifact’s country of origin, as well as the country where the artifact is being preserved. For example the episode on Congo naturally features colours and iconography inspired by Congolese art. But the unsettling sequences taking place in Belgium do seem to have traces of Magritte and Ensor in their DNA.
(2) Compare, for example, the sequence from The Art Dispute in which Greek statues are transported at sea during a storm (embedded below) with the inventive kitsch masterpiece La Serenissima (Guido Manuli, early 1980s).
Episodes:
01 The Cannon of Kandy
02 The Luba Mask
03 The Parthenon Marbles
04 The Bust of Nefertiti
05 The Diamond of Banjarmasin
06 The Feather Crown of Moctezuma
07 The Destruction of the Summer Palace
08 The Treasures of Benin
Credits:
Documentary director: Hans Pool
Documentary presentation: Erik Dijkstra
Volstok team
Creative direction: Wouter Sel
Animation direction: Joel Rabijns
Storyboarding: Joel Rabijns, Eline Mollet
Animation, design, compositing: Joel Rabijns, Eline Mollet, Daaf Wouters, Liesbeth Eeckman, Camille Chailloux, Senne Voorspoels, Vic Lemaitre, Bas Vaerewyck, Lennert Coryn, Soren Selleslagh, Dries Van Broeck, Manpaard
Animation production: Johanna Keppens
Animation project manangement: Sarah Verhofstadt
Hazazah team:
Documentary production: Maarten Kuit, Jeroen van den Idsert
I was responsible for the overall structure and direction of the animated sequences for all episodes. Before crafting the initial storyboards and key designs, a considerable part of my work was to throughly research the historical context and art of each depicted culture. Particularly in the second batch of episodes (5-8) we took sufficient time to make sure everything onscreen is to some degree period-accurate. While the anecdotes themselves are obviously fictionalized, condensed and stylized, tailored to the narrative structure of the documentary storyline, the way it is depicted should be as plausible as possible.