Alan Moore & Edwin Pouncey @ Fourth Dimensional Minds, The Barbican

PHOTOS BY
INDIA ROPER-EVANS

As part of the numerous events held at The Barbican for their current WATCH ME MOVE: The Animation Show, perhaps one of the most intriguing events is a collaboration between legendary comic doom specialist Alan Moore and noise artist Edwin Pouncey, at the suitably strangely-named evening, Fourth Dimensional Minds Eye Summoning.

The main link between this spoken word/experimental music performance and the current, history of animation exhibition is American experimental filmmaker Harry Smith; his avant garde film No 12. Heaven and Earth Magic is used by Moore and Pouncey as the visual backdrop for their mystical and at times unnerving exploration of words, sounds and pictures. It's an hour-long surrealist journey through early cut-out animation.

Sat in a large leather throne-like chair and surrounded by many projections of the film, Moore begins a stream of consciousness narration that is equally as surreal and otherworldly as the bombardment of images one is faced with. The imagery includes that of a Victorian lady being injected by an animated syringe ten times the size of her, a house with legs, and a tiny shadow of a man awkwardly dancing around the screen.



Coupled with Moore’s monotone whispers and Pouncey’s experimental noise pollution, the result is not unlike the theatre of the absurd - and the show is certainly something that the movement's forefathers Beckett and Pinter would be proud of.

Nothing seems coherent, yet you get the impression there is an overpowering force controlling the absurdity we see before us, even if it remains peripheral and hidden. This disorientating assortment of sound and vision ultimately ends in silence.

The fact that the Barbican is hosting such cutting-edge events alongside a fairly mainstream and accessible exhibition demonstrates that it truly is at the forefront of exciting modern art curation.

WATCH ME MOVE: The Animation Show is a fascinating exhibition and continues til Sep 11th. It is divided into seven interconnected themes: Apparitions, Characters, Superhumans, Fables, Fragments, Structures, and Visions and features the works of Walt Disney, Jan Švankmajer and William Kentridge amongst others. A MUST SEE.