Tommy Hartung's Undergound Movies | "New York Close Up" | Art21

How little does an artist need in a moving image to tell a story? In this film, artist Tommy Hartung employs minimal means and materials to create animated movies, performing a series of experiments in his basement studio in Ridgewood, Queens. Hartung's remodeled underground space functions as a workshop—or in the words of a friend, an "arena"—with colored lights, dioramas, and puppet-like characters. Using stop-motion photography, Hartung records a series of simple actions: blowing smoke through an artificial mouth, dripping Karo syrup on a frog, crumpling plastic wrap, adjusting a doll's clothing, and funnelling salt through a hole. Preferring what the artist terms "dead cinema," Hartung's hand-crafted props and their intentionally un-lifelike movements are against the grain of current computer-generated animation spectacles. Featuring scenes from the works "The Story of Edward Holmes" (2008) and "The Ascent of Man" (2009).

Tommy Hartung (b. 1979, Akron, Ohio, USA) lives and works in Queens, New York.

CREDITS | "New York Close Up" Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Cinematography: Andrew David Watson. Sound: Nicholas Lindner & Nick Ravich. Associate Producer: Ian Forster. Production Assistant: Paulina V. Ahlstrom, Don Edler & Maren Miller. Design: Open. Artwork: Tommy Hartung. Thanks: Candice Madey, Jorge Olivo, On Stellar Rays, Ronnie. An Art21 Workshop Production. © Art21, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.

"New York Close Up" is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support provided by The 1896 Studios & Stages.

For more info: http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup

Kind of a nice thing...

My name is Tommy Hartung. I make movies.

And I live and work in Ridgewood, Queens.

I just moved into a new space this past summer.

And I’ve really just been you know sitting in the space and thinking about what...what kind of space do I want to work in?

I was talking to one of my friends and he called it an arena, the studio as like some kind of arena.

And I really like that, as a sort of like this place where I’m just you know making a play as I’m making it, you know? And writing it.

This is just raw footage. The storm. And then this is just a ball of plastic wrap maybe around the size of my hand.

And this is just a...or, the clouds made out of battening, the stuff you stuff pillows with.

Cue the salt.

But you know a little...a lot of my planning is just sort of like these kind of experiments and like you know figuring out what the time and the sort of structure is.

I use the...the filmmaking process to document this, you know me acting out these different ideas on objects or you know these little setups or maquettes or dioramas.

NARRATOR: I would like to be able to tell you of transformation and change to cut deeply into the structure.

But this here now is (INAUDIBLE). We have to touch.

HARTUNG: I sort of latch on to some kind of external theme, you know. And then I just sort of use that as a structure conceptually and then whatever kind of set or theater that I create in my studio is like the sort of physical space for that idea.

When we see something you know move, we want to think of it as maybe something is alive but in my movies it’s just typically not the case.

I’m more interested in like some kind of dead cinema.

A lot of animation is describing some kind of real or lifelike situation.

I’m sort of interested more in my characters or any humanesque subjects in the movie. I’m more interested in them being not believable.

And what kind of illusion can you create out of that?

A lot of the times I just sort of like to move just to touch it all over, just to figure out how I want it to move.

But I generally like keeping objects open for a lot of different kinds of interpretations.

And I’m just sort of interested in like how little we...do we need in a moving image to tell a story.

Okay, so “Karo Ronnie’s Face” take one. Right. That’s how you guys do it?

We got the Karo....I wonder how much is left?

Yeah, there’s a little bit left. Just a little bit. I don’t want to mess with this paint job up on that too much.