FIRST BARDO:DEATH /
BARDO TWO:TRAVELS ON THE AFTER-DEATH PLANE
Vision One:Funny Chimera
1 of 9 episodes.
video & animation: London Fieldworks
text: Steve Beard
soundtrack: Dugal McKinnon
narration: Peter Blegvad
London Fieldworks created a working animation studio (2007) in Beaconsfield's upper gallery to explore and link themes of natural animal hibernation, the cryonics movement and the myth surrounding the death of Walt Disney. The project embodies the contradictory narratives of Walt Disney's morality tales set in the natural environment and his vision of the 'machine in the garden' and utilised a range of video animation techniques, soundtrack, narrative, prosthetics and solar activated animatronics. The artists worked in the upper gallery to produce an animated film - prince of the petrified forest - part inspired by the seminal eco novel, "Bambi" by Felix Salten and Robert Ettinger's "Prospect of Immortality". The animation was presented as a series of weekly episodes in Beaconsfield's arch space as it developed over a 7 week period.
Hibernator was a Beaconsfield commission, supported by Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, AHRC and London South Bank University.