Kickstarter

Cartune Xprez is excited to announce SPECIAL EFFECT, a brand new animation event premiering in November. For the first time ever we are commissioning work from our favorite artists to make the show. This is why we need your help.

Our goal is to fund the production of new animated work by James Duesing, Amy Lockhart, Yoshi Sodeoka, Billy Grant, Michael Bell-Smith, Ola Vasiljeva, Jacob Ciocci, Andrew Benson, Jeff Kriksciun, Chad VanGaalen, Philippe Blanchard, E*Rock, Luke Painter, Brandon Blommaert, Stu Hughes, Devin Flynn, Michael Robinson, Sabrina Ratté, Ben Coonley, and Brenna Murphy. Collectively their resume includes solo screenings at the 2012 Whitney Biennial, the MOMA in New York, the Sundance Film Festival, and many other institutions throughout the world.

THE COMMISSION
Taking inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER, we are producing a show that explores 'the zone', an inexplicable place that is not understood by humans. There are objects in the zone that exhibit great power. There are places that are said to make our deepest desires come true. It is pregnant with hope and possibility. We have asked 20 artists to explore this zone by each making a 30 second animated video piece.

THE EVENT
SPECIAL EFFECT will integrate these 20 new works into a performance involving hand-knit costumes, a hacked kinect camera, laser beams, and interactive cartoons. We bring these elements together to conjure 90 minutes of live television from a dystopian future. In it we touch upon the question "how do people deal with the unknown zone?" As Tarkovsky put it, "The zone is a zone, it's life, and as he makes his way across it a man may break down or he may come through. Whether he comes through or not depends on his own self-respect, and his capacity to distinguish what matters and what is merely passing." Emerging from the saturated stew of internet and television culture, SPECIAL EFFECT asks us to slow down and deal with the incomprehensible. How do we distinguish what really matters?

The project premieres in November 2012 at the Museum of Moving Image in New York City followed by a tour of Australia and New Zealand alongside Otherfilm. Following our trip down under we will bring the show to several cities around the world in 2013. 

THE ARTISTS

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REWARDS

CARTUNE XPREZ
For 6 years Cartune Xprez has published DVDs and produced tours around the world totaling over 200 events in 20 countries. We've been described as a cartoon gang: part live video theater, part psychedelic insurrection, part animation road show. We aim to harness the energies of video artists who remix commercial imagery to the extent of anarchy and animate their way out of Sunday morning cartoons.