The animation works of Dutch film director Floris Kaayk explores the fading border between fiction and reality. His first two animated short films, The Order Electrus and Metalosis Maligna, are (as he himself calls it) “fictional information-service films” which borrow the typical features of nature documentaries. While their themes—insects evolved from electrical devices, medical implants that encroach on the human body—are fantastic and absurd, filming and editing techniques, background music, as well as the refined accent of the narrator by which they are presented clearly mimic those of informative documentaries. This ironic mode of representation offers the viewers the humor of grotesque improbability.
In The Origin of Creatures, the artist’s interests in insect, evolution, and technology meet with a dystopian imagination of a world after the apocalypse. Rather than constituting one systematic unity, the human body is divided into component parts, creating mutants made of only legs, arms, fingers, etc. These new creatures attempt to build a Babel Tower upon the ruins of the past world, but this co-operation of segmented body parts result in a failure. Inspired by Swarm Intell igence, this film presents a playful parody of a divided labor lacking communication.
