This is an animation still of "Slurb", the installation proposed for outdoor projection at the St. Pete Times Forum for Lights On Tampa. Image courtesy of the artist.
Download Slurb soundtrack!
Before heading to the St. Pete Times Forum, download the soundtrack to your MP3 player and watch the show. Downloading Tip: Right click and "save target as" to download the MP3 to your computer.
Slurb 2009
18 minute loop, animation and sound
Concept/ direction/animation: Marina Zurkow
Music by Lem Jay Ignacio
Additional animation: Jen Kelly
The animated, carnivalesque tailgate party of Slurb loops and stutters, like a vinyl record stuck in a groove. Slurb – a word that collapses “slum” and “suburb” – sounds like “slurp,” “slump,” “slumber;” it encapsulates the dreamy, melancholic ode to the rise of slime, a watery future of toxic seas. In Slurb, there is a sense that everyone is waiting – but a cataclysm already occurred. People have been forced to move onto the water, where the jellyfish now have dominion. There is a history of satirical illustration, epitomized by J.J.Grandville in the 19th century, in which animal-headed humans are deployed in the telling of troubling social narratives. Slurb is that kind of story. Facts of the ocean’s radical changes in acidity and oxygen levels form the backbone of the animation; overfishing, dumping, and climate change’s heating of ocean currents have already triggered a reversion toward a primordial sea in parts of the ocean larger than the state of Texas. Slurb’s surface is inspired by fictions, like J.G. Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel Drowned World, in which inhabitants of a flooded world feel the tug of the sun, and dream of a return to their amniotic past. Returns – like skips in a scratched record – echo in the musical score and become loops. The long loop of Slurb as a whole takes you from drowned city to broken highways to emptied suburbs, while each character must endlessly repeat her small action: fishing, rowing, waving, crying, dancing, diving, standing up and sitting down… some human, some mermaid, some mutant… all interlocked in a dirge that feels vivid, mournful and even jolly at times.
BRIEF BIO:Marina Zurkow makes animated cartoons, interactive installations, and printed pop objects.
Recent projects include Karaoke Ice: a box truck, free icies, custom tinklepop karaoke, and a squirrel emcee, with Katie Salen and Nancy Nowacek; and the seven-channel animated installation, Nicking the Never, that overlaid the pitfalls of a young girl onto the Tibetan Wheel of Life. Zurkow also created the award-winning episodic cartoon Braingirl, chronicling a mutant-cute girl who wears her insides on the outside. Her icons and characters have been incorporated into films, hotel design, lightboxes and clothing. Upcoming projects include Funnelhead, a large collection of animated, sculptural installations and their artifacts.
Since 2000, Zurkow has exhibited at Sundance, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Res Fest, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, The National Museum for Women in the Arts, Eyebeam Atelier, and other venues. Her videos have been broadcast on MTV, FujiTV and PBS. She teaches at NYU’s Interactive Technology Program (ITP) and lives in Brooklyn.
