SPUR, a Prop Story of a Stoned Cast in Monumental Alley
Spur aims to become a feature film build from a range of short films on a collection of remarkable collection of objects and their stories. The objects are all part of the museum worthy collection of Robin Noorda, artist and filmmaker, who writes the texts and poems that accompany each short film, or chapter in Spur.
Logline
Spur is a partly autobiographical art film. It is a collection of stories and poems in trick film form, a (rail) road movie through surreal landscapes with personal historical objects as monumental icons.
Format
The series of visualized stories form, as it were, a painting exhibition in which a trail is drawn through historical associations and thematically connected interpretations and stories behind personal objects.
The objects are often made of stone and are therefore called the 'Stoned Cast' as static characters. It concerns sculptures, miraculous constructions, frozen spatial and historical events, fossils, minerals, prehistoric tools, a meteorite, architectural constellations, ruin landscapes, but also scientific instruments, naturalia and taxidermy objects. As if the collection of an art and natural history museum, such as the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, in a distant transient future and in a surrealistic dream landscape, presents itself as archaeological access. A Vanitas open air museum of personal icons where the ravages of time leave its mark. Although the objects in this decorum look like static, lifeless monuments, they are not dead. They are (re)animated in a subtle or emphatic way, literally or figuratively.
In addition, the camera movements often consist of tracks in and pans with which a constantly traveling feeling, zooming from the past to the future, masters you. It's almost like watching an episode of 'Rail Away' but through surreal landscapes. Hence the characterization railroad movie.
Concept
The Stoned Cast' therefore in no way means the intoxicated state of actors. Just as an object casts a shadow, memories evoke virtual images, congealed casts of fleeting reality. An old photo album with frozen snapshots, as it were, but as spatial objects. These historical moments are interpreted and shown in this film, as it were broadcast. That is the literal 'Cast' of this film and with that this animated and experimental documentary moves, despite the stories and poems based on historical and factual data, between the domains of art, fiction and non-fiction. It is, as it were, a collection of stories and poems in which each chapter stands on its own, but leads in an associative way to the next story. All these subjects are surrealistic landscape paintings, but performed in a spatial manner and set in motion with stories, poems and music.
The historical stories associated with the objects themselves are variedly personal, sometimes warm, sometimes rebellious, poetic, magical, drawing, observing, political, amazing and compelling. The stories are usually interpreted in the form of voice-over texts, but also through declamations, poems, music lyrics, soundscapes, visual music, archive material, graphics, typography and choreography.
Some relate to stories from my native village Blaricum, growing up as a scion of a red artist family in a rented house between the villas of wealthy people, the tyranny at primary school, the personal entanglements with the war criminal Pieter Menten and the growing number of large villas that apparently corruption swallowed large bites of 'protected' Goois Nature Reserve. Those things colored me and fueled my effective rebellion against them. But it's also about the stories about fossils that I found in the Volcano Eifel, the Jurassic Coast and Gobi desert. Those fossils and other naturalia brought me awareness and gave me a broader philosophy of life and historical awareness. The view on nature and my rebellion led to an intrinsic attitude to life that eventually finds expression in art.
Examples include a morbid ode to the Great Barrier Reef with dead coral from there (Coralia Morte) and a poem about the last iceberg.
Furthermore, sculpture, photography, film, drawing, animation, minimal music, dance, installations and performances are discussed and eventually the combination of art and the rebellious results in the creation of the art movement Tropism, a movement in which the stimulus gives rise to to revolution (biological meaning of Tropism: the ability of an organism to orient or turn towards a simulus, the most famous example being a plant growing in the direction of light).
Spur aims to become a feature film build from a range of short films on a collection of remarkable collection of objects and their stories. The objects are all part of the museum worthy collection of Robin Noorda, artist and filmmaker, who writes the texts and poems that accompany each short film, or chapter in Spur.
Logline
Spur is a partly autobiographical art film. It is a collection of stories and poems in trick film form, a (rail) road movie through surreal landscapes with personal historical objects as monumental icons.
Format
The series of visualized stories form, as it were, a painting exhibition in which a trail is drawn through historical associations and thematically connected interpretations and stories behind personal objects.
The objects are often made of stone and are therefore called the 'Stoned Cast' as static characters. It concerns sculptures, miraculous constructions, frozen spatial and historical events, fossils, minerals, prehistoric tools, a meteorite, architectural constellations, ruin landscapes, but also scientific instruments, naturalia and taxidermy objects. As if the collection of an art and natural history museum, such as the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, in a distant transient future and in a surrealistic dream landscape, presents itself as archaeological access. A Vanitas open air museum of personal icons where the ravages of time leave its mark. Although the objects in this decorum look like static, lifeless monuments, they are not dead. They are (re)animated in a subtle or emphatic way, literally or figuratively.
In addition, the camera movements often consist of tracks in and pans with which a constantly traveling feeling, zooming from the past to the future, masters you. It's almost like watching an episode of 'Rail Away' but through surreal landscapes. Hence the characterization railroad movie.
Concept
The Stoned Cast' therefore in no way means the intoxicated state of actors. Just as an object casts a shadow, memories evoke virtual images, congealed casts of fleeting reality. An old photo album with frozen snapshots, as it were, but as spatial objects. These historical moments are interpreted and shown in this film, as it were broadcast. That is the literal 'Cast' of this film and with that this animated and experimental documentary moves, despite the stories and poems based on historical and factual data, between the domains of art, fiction and non-fiction. It is, as it were, a collection of stories and poems in which each chapter stands on its own, but leads in an associative way to the next story. All these subjects are surrealistic landscape paintings, but performed in a spatial manner and set in motion with stories, poems and music.
The historical stories associated with the objects themselves are variedly personal, sometimes warm, sometimes rebellious, poetic, magical, drawing, observing, political, amazing and compelling. The stories are usually interpreted in the form of voice-over texts, but also through declamations, poems, music lyrics, soundscapes, visual music, archive material, graphics, typography and choreography.
Some relate to stories from my native village Blaricum, growing up as a scion of a red artist family in a rented house between the villas of wealthy people, the tyranny at primary school, the personal entanglements with the war criminal Pieter Menten and the growing number of large villas that apparently corruption swallowed large bites of 'protected' Goois Nature Reserve. Those things colored me and fueled my effective rebellion against them. But it's also about the stories about fossils that I found in the Volcano Eifel, the Jurassic Coast and Gobi desert. Those fossils and other naturalia brought me awareness and gave me a broader philosophy of life and historical awareness. The view on nature and my rebellion led to an intrinsic attitude to life that eventually finds expression in art.
Examples include a morbid ode to the Great Barrier Reef with dead coral from there (Coralia Morte) and a poem about the last iceberg.
Furthermore, sculpture, photography, film, drawing, animation, minimal music, dance, installations and performances are discussed and eventually the combination of art and the rebellious results in the creation of the art movement Tropism, a movement in which the stimulus gives rise to to revolution (biological meaning of Tropism: the ability of an organism to orient or turn towards a simulus, the most famous example being a plant growing in the direction of light).
Still from Rebirth of Venus
Rebirth of Venus
The first finished short film of the Spur collection is Rebirth of Venus
Synopsis
Rebirth of Venus is a short arthouse film by filmmaker and artist Robin Noorda, realised in stop-motion animation.
This experimental film is based on a poem by Noorda about inequality and oppression.
He addresses an array of manifestations of oppression causing the exploitation of mother nature, violation of human rights and especially women's rights. In Noorda's view, all these phenomena of oppression have a common denominator.
The dilapidated and overgrown Piranesi-style buildings are inspired by the iconic architecture of two of the most totalitarian and predatory regimes in European history: the Roman Forum and the concrete structures of Nazi architect Albert Speer. In this magical-realistic setting, insect-like optical instruments create feminine images that come to life.
The miniature set is made of polystyrene packing material. Noorda was inspired by the architectural potential of some of the shapes in the waste material and decided to reuse it.
In Short
The Rebirth of Venus film...
• is based on Noorda's poem about exploitation, oppression and women's rights,
• has a set made from waste polystyrene packing material,
• has visual effects that are all optical, no CGI (except for the fish),
• is experimental and surrealistic,
• has no dialogues or character-driven plot, is even minimalistic, but also heavily loaded,
• is a zero budget, 9', 4K, 5.1 surround, 2-year-one-man-production-indie, stop-motion-animation film of 13.500 photographs.
The first finished short film of the Spur collection is Rebirth of Venus
Synopsis
Rebirth of Venus is a short arthouse film by filmmaker and artist Robin Noorda, realised in stop-motion animation.
This experimental film is based on a poem by Noorda about inequality and oppression.
He addresses an array of manifestations of oppression causing the exploitation of mother nature, violation of human rights and especially women's rights. In Noorda's view, all these phenomena of oppression have a common denominator.
The dilapidated and overgrown Piranesi-style buildings are inspired by the iconic architecture of two of the most totalitarian and predatory regimes in European history: the Roman Forum and the concrete structures of Nazi architect Albert Speer. In this magical-realistic setting, insect-like optical instruments create feminine images that come to life.
The miniature set is made of polystyrene packing material. Noorda was inspired by the architectural potential of some of the shapes in the waste material and decided to reuse it.
In Short
The Rebirth of Venus film...
• is based on Noorda's poem about exploitation, oppression and women's rights,
• has a set made from waste polystyrene packing material,
• has visual effects that are all optical, no CGI (except for the fish),
• is experimental and surrealistic,
• has no dialogues or character-driven plot, is even minimalistic, but also heavily loaded,
• is a zero budget, 9', 4K, 5.1 surround, 2-year-one-man-production-indie, stop-motion-animation film of 13.500 photographs.
l'Écorché Combattant
l'Écorché Combattant
A second short film is l'Écorché Combattant.
Logline
A long-lost but recovered teen drawing from 1975 of an anatomical muscle image with a moon lander leads to a surreal film about the analogy between virus infections and the theory about the extraterrestrial origin of life (panspermia).
Synopsis
The film has three parts.
The first part is a documentary introduction in which the maker tells about the long-lost but recovered teenage drawing of the muscle image with the moon lander and the thinking behind it.
This is recorded in the imaginative studio of the maker in Loods 6 aan het IJ and is intersected with the drawing itself and historical material, such as photos showing the statue on the chimney in the parental home.
The second part is a stop-motion animated surreal journey across a remnant-strewn lunar surface, visually associating a poem by the creator with a large number of objects from the history of astronomy and space travel, including a lunar lander, a stranded Soyuz spaceship, a Third Reich radio telescope and a graveyard of planetariums and other ancient astronomical instruments.
The last part, the epilogue, is again documentary. The maker works in the model (the stop-motion decor) and philosophizes about decline and decay, based on current technological, cultural, social and political issues.
A second short film is l'Écorché Combattant.
Logline
A long-lost but recovered teen drawing from 1975 of an anatomical muscle image with a moon lander leads to a surreal film about the analogy between virus infections and the theory about the extraterrestrial origin of life (panspermia).
Synopsis
The film has three parts.
The first part is a documentary introduction in which the maker tells about the long-lost but recovered teenage drawing of the muscle image with the moon lander and the thinking behind it.
This is recorded in the imaginative studio of the maker in Loods 6 aan het IJ and is intersected with the drawing itself and historical material, such as photos showing the statue on the chimney in the parental home.
The second part is a stop-motion animated surreal journey across a remnant-strewn lunar surface, visually associating a poem by the creator with a large number of objects from the history of astronomy and space travel, including a lunar lander, a stranded Soyuz spaceship, a Third Reich radio telescope and a graveyard of planetariums and other ancient astronomical instruments.
The last part, the epilogue, is again documentary. The maker works in the model (the stop-motion decor) and philosophizes about decline and decay, based on current technological, cultural, social and political issues.
Movie plan
Introduction, the maker on camera in the studio of Loods 6 between the pillars of the concrete construction of the Royal Dutch Steamboat Company building dating from the 1920s.
“In my parental home there was always an anatomical muscle model on the mantelpiece. A plaster statue of a man without skin and connective tissue in a dynamic pose, as if he wanted to throw something in the air. On that mantelpiece, the statue stood under the wall clock, as if he wanted to keep time and sell a blowout. The statue is called L'Ecorché Combattant, (the skinned warrior) and was made in 1845 by Jacques-Eugene Caudron. The original is in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des beaux-arts. At the age of fifteen, in the summer of 1975, I made a pen drawing of the image, in which it knocks away a lunar lander. The last moon landing had taken place three years earlier and it still haunted me. But I was also fascinated by the microscopic organisms called bacteriophage. In fact, with their landing gear, they also look like tiny lunar landers. I also wanted to make a drawing with the same muscle image, in which it pointed at a gigantic bacteriophage. In addition to the landing gear, the invasive nature of both landers was a confusing similarity.
The drawing was intended for my portfolio for admission to art academy. On the back I had noted all the details about the work process. It was a particularly labour-intensive pen drawing, made with the thinnest drawing pen; a Rotring 0.1mm pin. The pointillist shades of gray in particular were painstaking work. It had taken me 50 hours to put all those dots. During a severe storm, the skylight above my drawing board leaked, causing a large brown stain on work. I was horrified to discover the disaster, but dabbing with bleach managed to remove most of the stain. A few years later I lost the drawing. I no longer made the variant with a bacteriophage instead of the lunar lander. Only recently, forty-five years later, did I find the work in an undefined folder in the storage room. I have now also executed the drawing in color, something I had already planned at the time. And after this long incubation period, I have further developed the subject into a poem and a cinematic remake, in which, in addition to spacecraft, celestial bodies and time, the bacteriophage still makes an appearance.”
The film continues with stop-motion animation, a visually surreal spectacle of extraterrestrial phenomena that accompanies a poem in which time comes to a standstill amid a graveyard of crashed planetariums in the Mare Tranquillitatis. In this surreal landscape, the muscle statue, the l'Écorché Combattant, is frozen at the moment he wants to knock the moon lander away. That lunar lander suddenly turns out to be a bacteriophage, and the analogy between micro-level infection and macro-level invasion raises the question of whether the system of the origin of life is based on contamination or pollination. And perhaps even the question of how this translates geopolitically into occupation or influence.
Introduction, the maker on camera in the studio of Loods 6 between the pillars of the concrete construction of the Royal Dutch Steamboat Company building dating from the 1920s.
“In my parental home there was always an anatomical muscle model on the mantelpiece. A plaster statue of a man without skin and connective tissue in a dynamic pose, as if he wanted to throw something in the air. On that mantelpiece, the statue stood under the wall clock, as if he wanted to keep time and sell a blowout. The statue is called L'Ecorché Combattant, (the skinned warrior) and was made in 1845 by Jacques-Eugene Caudron. The original is in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des beaux-arts. At the age of fifteen, in the summer of 1975, I made a pen drawing of the image, in which it knocks away a lunar lander. The last moon landing had taken place three years earlier and it still haunted me. But I was also fascinated by the microscopic organisms called bacteriophage. In fact, with their landing gear, they also look like tiny lunar landers. I also wanted to make a drawing with the same muscle image, in which it pointed at a gigantic bacteriophage. In addition to the landing gear, the invasive nature of both landers was a confusing similarity.
The drawing was intended for my portfolio for admission to art academy. On the back I had noted all the details about the work process. It was a particularly labour-intensive pen drawing, made with the thinnest drawing pen; a Rotring 0.1mm pin. The pointillist shades of gray in particular were painstaking work. It had taken me 50 hours to put all those dots. During a severe storm, the skylight above my drawing board leaked, causing a large brown stain on work. I was horrified to discover the disaster, but dabbing with bleach managed to remove most of the stain. A few years later I lost the drawing. I no longer made the variant with a bacteriophage instead of the lunar lander. Only recently, forty-five years later, did I find the work in an undefined folder in the storage room. I have now also executed the drawing in color, something I had already planned at the time. And after this long incubation period, I have further developed the subject into a poem and a cinematic remake, in which, in addition to spacecraft, celestial bodies and time, the bacteriophage still makes an appearance.”
The film continues with stop-motion animation, a visually surreal spectacle of extraterrestrial phenomena that accompanies a poem in which time comes to a standstill amid a graveyard of crashed planetariums in the Mare Tranquillitatis. In this surreal landscape, the muscle statue, the l'Écorché Combattant, is frozen at the moment he wants to knock the moon lander away. That lunar lander suddenly turns out to be a bacteriophage, and the analogy between micro-level infection and macro-level invasion raises the question of whether the system of the origin of life is based on contamination or pollination. And perhaps even the question of how this translates geopolitically into occupation or influence.