Jessie Mott

a short animation conceived through the collaboration of three visual artists — Diane Christiansen, Jessie Mott, and Alejandra Trigoso — that stages a volatile theater of bodies in flux. Within a shifting frame, cut-out fragments of animals and humans slip in and out of view, forming and unforming as creatures that vomit, expel, and rearrange their own parts. The work resists stable form, instead embracing mutation, rupture, and play as its guiding principles. The soundtrack is composed by artist-musician duo Diane Christiansen and Steve Dawson with an exuberantly eclectic, “everything but the kitchen sink” sensibility, that mirrors this unruly choreography—layering clamor, rhythm, and unexpected sonic textures. Together, image and sound conjure a surreal pageant of grotesque humor and unsettling vitality, where the boundaries between species, bodies, and objects dissolve into a restless state of becoming.

Animals debate the sticky subject of body dysmorphia and the merits of reconstructive surgery in this short animation. "Jessie Mott wrote the script for this, recorded the voices and made the drawings. I constructed the soundtrack and animated her drawings." --Steve Reinke

A group of forest creatures witnesses a diabolical birth that causes unrest, while animals discuss their disintegrating bodies and psyches as they undergo different transformations. A follow-up to Reinke/Mott's previous collaboration, Everyone (2009).