This Eighties-era Mel Gibson-loving animator’s yonic saga Love Soldiers is a triumph of mood, music and washed through colour. Not for the feint-hearted.
How did your interest in animation arise?
When I was at art school doing my BA I started to feel a bit limited by the photographic base of live-action. I wanted to do something a bit more like painting or sculpture but with moving image so animation was a logical progression.
What are you working on right now?
I am starting a collaboration with another director, we are making a short semi-abstract piece that will combine live action with hand-painted, three-dimensional set pieces.
Who are your heroes?
Animation-wise it would be Suzan Pitt, and Vince Collins. I like the fact that when asked what motivated Collins to make Malice in Wonderland he replied, “I just wanted to make a porno”. I'd say that's a pretty good reason to spend a large amount of time making an animation by hand, and one I can totally relate to. Another hero is LA-based underground filmmaker Damon Packard, his work is mind-blowing and unlike anything else, it's completely hilarious while also being sublime, and just kind of hovers on the edge of so many things but makes so much sense.
How long does a typical piece take to do?
I don't know about typical but the last film I made, Love Soldiers, my graduation animation at the RCA took over a year to make. Animation can take a while if you are hand drawing and inking every frame. It depends on the techniques used and how many people are working on the project.
Where do you go for inspiration?
I watch a lot of films. I always have. And there are artists I am obsessed with. I like things that are seductive and strange, and I like artists who make their own pornography; Henry Darger for example, or Japanese artist Suehiro Maruo. I'm also interested in the art of the insane and things like Codex Seriphinianus, so I often dip into my book collection for inspiration.
What’s the biggest challenge of working in the way that you do?
I have learned to let go and move onto other parts of a film when I get stuck on something, and trust that those parts will emerge and resolve later. Of course the vision remains perfectly vague in your mind if you 'don't' make something, but when you do, during the process of teasing it out you can reach a stage where it doesn't look or feel right yet. I am a complete aesthete, so this can put me off what I'm doing. I don't like to force it into an over-storyboarded rigid thing in the early stages before the aesthetic language has developed enough.
If you could spend one minute with one person that has had an influence on your work, who would they be and what would you ask them?
I would probably go back to the early 80s and corner the young Mel Gibson in a hotel lobby and ask him if he would have sex with me. In the room there would have to be a view over some kind of concrete metropolis and a sunset and of course some silhouettes of palm trees. It would be like my Madame Bovary moment.
show2013.rca.ac.uk/13_ani_chloe_feinberg