Jerzy Kucia - Strojenie Instrumentów (2000)

Jerzy Kucia’s work occurs in a world held at arm’s length from reality; the familiar forms of humanity -- our bodies, accessories, instruments -- all remain in the foreground, but floating in a vague disconnect from each other, lending each other a weight not always possible in the linear approach of traditional animation approaches. Even time and movement find themselves removed in a way that’s startlingly refreshing, and, perhaps more notably, remarkably vocal. With the exception of a few scraps of music, flares of radio static and churning machines, these films operate almost exclusively on their own silent language, a stark economy of symbols and settings woven into dense abstractions of the Polish identity. To begin with, there lies the most audible of elements, Kucia’s use of sound. Sparse, almost always pared down to bare essentials (the motorcycle on Strovenov Instrumentej is almost laughable in its putt-putting), the sounds bleed into each other, create murky segments