LAUREN HOUSEGO

MASSES

Media: Stop-motion animation

Time: 1 minute 59 seconds

Masses is an absurd stop-motion animation originally inspired by Jose Saramago’s book Blindness, in which every person in a city suddenly loses their sight and the social order disintegrates, and the residents of the city come together in a chaotic mass. The animation explores these themes of the illusion of civilization and its fragility.

The characters are born into a system in which they are immediately put to work, mindlessly carrying out their mysterious and seemingly-endless task at the expense of their bodies which begin to break and split. The puppets have transparent, ghost-like forms which make their features almost invisible and limits their identity as individuals. The animation questions the nature and purpose of work, productivity and exhaustion, and what happens when we discover that our roles may not be as important as they seem.