Absent

synopsis

When you are a child, you imagine that toys and furniture come to life as soon as you look away. Freud calls this phase “magical thinking” when one half hopes and half fears that things are able to keep a secret from us. In her short film series “Recyclers,” animation artist and sound designer Nikki Schuster takes up these thoughts and lets items culled from the trash of various metropolises dance while founding their own subculture. In the experimental photo animation absent she goes one step further and finds life where the human element has long departed: a microscopic view submerges directly into slender plastic pipes and dusty cracks in walls in vacated buildings in Spain, Bolivia, Mexico, Bosnia, Croatia, and Germany. Glistening light alternates with the black of concealed corners in the debris- and trash-filled rooms.