Marina Zurkow Talks

Marina Zurkow is an artist who works with character and narrative in animated cartoons, interactive installations, print and pop objects. I first saw her at the MOVE3 Conference this year where she showed us segments of her 7 screen animated video installation, Nicking The Never (above clip). It was amazing. So greatly impressed by Marina at the conference, I approached her for an interview. She kindly abided.

How did you first get involved with animation and what tools do you use?

I came out of fine art installations, very pre-computer, and went into set designing for horror movies and producing for Japanese TV shows in the US. Then I made several live action, experimental and narrative 16mm films, and quite a few music videos. Then I fell into the web. Out of that work, and out of the development of Flash, I found animation as a perfect vehicle for the way my brain works. I started animating around 1995, very simplistically. It took a long time to find my chops and my patience.

Your work is very beautiful, fantastical and colorful – what were your influences for “Nicking the Never” and what does that title mean?

Nicking the Never is a large-scale, animated, seven channel DVD installation that charts a course through youthful female imagination, psycho-sexual fantasy, and desire. Composed as a set of allegories about a young girl stuck in a kinetic world of emotional pitfalls, this kaleidoscopic trip into the self is based on the structure of the Tibetan Wheel of Life, a Buddhist teaching tool developed in the 7th century, whose images luridly and vividly articulate the human struggle with need, jealousy, complacence, aggression, desire, ego, and stasis.

The title came from the idea of trying to scratch at infinity, chip away at the impossible. In this case, that impossible refers to the prospect of getting off the emotional Wheel.


Most of your work is done with the aid of a computer – however a lot of your content deals with elements of nature; animals, the outdoors, the human body. How does nature affect you and your work and how do you feel about relying on technology for your art?

I always try to mix the digital and the analog. I draw with a large wacom tablet, and let a lot of the work remain ugly, imperfect. I am really interested in all the liminal spaces- between man-made and natural, deliberate and accidental, pop and darkness, and so on. As for the animals, the cartoon legacy of anthropomorphism and cute metaphor is what drew me to the medium in the first place.

What projects are you currently working on?

I have two new large-scale projects. The first is Karaoke Ice, on which I'm working with two collaborators, Nancy Nowacek and Katie Salen, and with composer Lem Jay Ignacio. It premieres at ISEA/ZeroOne festival in San Jose in August 2006. It's a pop culture mash-up, an ice cream truck-turned-mobile-karaoke-unit, deployed to unite people through the singing, battling, and recording of pop songs rendered in twinkling ice-cream-truck-song vernacular. Participants perform for an audience from the transformed rear of the vehicle, using a customized karaoke engine. Free popsicles lure prospective performers to participate, creating an economy of exchange: the truck gives you icies, and you give it a song. Remedios the Squirrel Cub distributes the pops while choreographing enigmatic rituals of his own. He is the truck's best friend, poor magician and master of ceremonies. The resulting mix is one that celebrates the power of music to entice and inflame, as well as the sense of community that can be fostered among strangers trapped in a terrestrial network.

The second project is a science fiction 'thing' called "Funnelhead: Adventures in Psychotropia." It'll be a series of comic books, a novella, an installation pieces made of 3D wireframes come to life, in which are embedded tiny video monitors and speakers. I'm just starting this one. But
there's a commemorative plate already for "Adventures in Psychotropia." It's for sale at o-matic.com :) I like making tributes to the unfinished.

Is most of your work done solo or do you collaborate with other artists?

I collaborate often. All of the single channel work since 1999 has been done alone, but many of the interactive projects have been collaborative. PDPal was a 2 yr suite of projects I made with technologist Julian Bleecker and architect Scott Paterson. It took the form of narrative map making tools, used via the web, PDA, and cell phone. Pussy Weevil I also made with Julian
Bleecker. And on my "solo" projects, I always work with composers, primarily with the ultra-talented Lem Jay Ignacio.

Which work of yours are you most proud of - if you had to pick one?

Oh, gee. I won't answer that. That's a bit like answering which child of yours you love the most, or which ex-boyfriend you hate the least. in other words, it's a bit fraught, and I'm fickle at worst.

Check out Marina's website at www.o-matic.com to see more of her work.