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Alien Eroticism and Erotic Alienation: Ruth Marsh’s Fruiting Bodies

By Violet Pask

In their VR game Fruiting Bodies, Ruth Marsh has recreated the human body as an alien landscape that players, embodying a tentacled creature named Feltus, are invited to explore. While these landscapes are not always immediately recognizable as human, the titles given to each chapter, such as Chapter 2: Gut Flora, Chapter 3: Treasure Trail, or Chapter 4: Peach Fuzz, provide a framework for understanding, or at least contextualizing, what you are moving through. These titles are often colloquial, and even fantastical, paralleling Marsh’s depiction of the body as bound neither to biological accuracy nor to reality. Instead, Marsh uses a playful referentiality that is more akin to the way a person might relate to their own body as a foreign landscape, a series of biological occurrences that are not fully understood, but lived out regardless.

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Check out the recorded in-person events from AFX 2023 below:

Congratulations Martins Madumere - Commissioned BIPOC Animator for 2023’s Festival!

The Animation Festival of Halifax is excited and delighted to announce that over 2022 we’ll be working with Martins Madumere as he creates a new short animated film. Martins is a Nigerian-born illustrator, animator, and writer based in the part of Mi’kma’ki also known as Prince Edward Island. You can follow Martins on Twitter @madumeremartins and see some of his animation on his YouTube channel.

The BIPOC Animator Film Commission and Mentoring Program is made possible through funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage and sponsorship of the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative.

Notes on Animation

Shannon Brownlee - Opposites Attract: Face to Face with Chris Landreth’s Animation

From 2020 to 2022, AFX commissioned local artists interested in animation to make a short animated film inspired by the work of Helen Hill (who was always keen to introduce artists to animation). These have been tough times so the spirit of Helen has been most welcome in the following short films screened at AFX:

This Does Not Authorize Re-Entry - Jenny Yujia Shi 施雨迦
Circles - Stephanie Yee
Home - Bria Miller

Follow us at @anifesthfx on Twitter and Instagram for more animation commission news.

About If I Knew, I Would Assure You:

If I Knew, I Would Assure You is a four-part series of new short animations commissioned by AFX as part of the festival’s celebration of experimental animator Helen Hill. Each new work is exhibited along with the Hill film that inspired it.

From 1995-2000, Hill resided in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, where she taught animation, made some of her most well-known films, and worked for several social justice causes including anti-poverty, food security, and animal rights activism. 

Curator Becka Barker says, “Helen Hill was such an important mentor to a generation of artists and local social activists, and her work, which centres compassion, care, and love, is as important today as it has ever been. I was wishing Helen was still with us to have conversations with these four artists. Animation seemed like the perfect vehicle to imagine what those conversations could be.”

If I Knew, I Would Assure You is a project of Carbon Arc Cinema and the Animation Festival of Halifax. Carbon Arc Cinema is located in Kjipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral, unceded unsurrendered territory of the Mi'kmaq Nation. We appreciate that our audience may be accessing our online program from many other territories outside Mi’kma’ki, and we invite everyone to consider the territory from which they participate. Furthermore, we acknowledge that colonial oppression still exists in virtual spaces, as well, and that in all spaces we inhabit, we are all treaty people.  

We gratefully acknowledge the support from The Canada Council for the Arts, Nova Scotia Arts Council, and the Centre for Art Tapes for making this project possible.