Borderline Animation

As an artist and filmmaker working in what is notion-ally called `animation', Thorsten Fleisch works at intersections of art, science and technology. His works belong to a genre of Structural—Materialist film as well as being highly self-reflexive investigations into the minute workings of natural phenomena. In this article, Fleisch reveals some of the underlying ideas and concepts of his films as well as the techniques involved in creating them. Fleisch has been making experimental films for more than a decade now; most of them fall under the general rubric of `animation' but their production processes and techniques belie an unusual complexity of source materials, concepts and techniques. These processes are very important to the result as Fleisch tries to find unusual ways to generate images. Fleisch's work is notable for its aesthetic and technically masterful treatment of organic materials (blood, skin, ashes) and scientific phenomena (fractals, crystals, voltage). This richly illustrated article contains many colourful details about the following films: K.I.L.L. — Kinetic Image Laboratory/Lobotomy (1998), Bloodlust (1998), Silver Screen (2000), Skinflick (2002), Gestalt (2003), Friendly Fire (2003), Kosmos (2004) and Energie! (2007).