A R C H I E F1 9 9 6  
.14
  James Duesing
Law of averages
  USA 1996
Videotape, 14:54, colour, mono
Computer animation makes invisible fantasies tangible. As in ‘The nightmare before Christmas’ or ‘Toy story’, ‘Law of averages’ presents an exciting battle between a humorous image language and a disturbing content. Here, in this abstract world, there is still a trace of traditional story-telling identifiable: a man (the main character?) leaves his apartment and finds a person bleeding on the sidewalk in front of the building. From that moment, the hero has to work his way with a Marlowe-like imperturbability through a chaos of disturbing phenomena. Nothing is what it seems, as he himself in a Bogart off-voice brightly determines in despair. The carved marble text boards that he comes across in his travels excel in pointless truths: “Believe in divine intervention, Yell until they get it right, Buy things on credit, Plant seeds in even rows, Avoid foreign countries.” Just as was the case with the hard-boiled detectives from the black and white forties, it is just as impossible in retrospect precisely to reconstruct what exactly happened in this colourful counterpart from the animated nineties. However, there is no doubt that is was extremely entertaining and disturbing.

Erik Daams

Animation James Duesing, Lisa Slates, Editing Mat Davis, Mark Mock, Sound, Music, Sound mixer John McDaniel


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