With Brains Like These,
Who Needs Eyes?
Ever notice that most cartoon characters are boys? Oh, yes, there is the token female here and there, but no one would ever call Petunia Pig a complex character, and Minnie Mouse was just a shrill version of Mickey in drag. As for superheroes, when one compares Spiderman’s existential meditations on the responsibilities of power to the lipstick-and-golden-lasso peep show that comprises the Wonder Woman franchise, well, the Amazon comes across as a bit dim. And don’t even mention Batgirl. No really, don’t.
Enter Braingirl, a modern mutant heroine who provides the antidote to milquetoast female cartoon characters. Wearing her brain (and her emotions) on the outside, Briangirl explores a sometimes treacherous emotional landscape, probing issues of gender identity and relationship politics, and uncovering the darker aspects of maternal affection.
With her exposed cerebellum and webbed fingers, Braingirl confidently inhabits a body that defies the girlishly pretty conventions for animated female characters. Wearing only Nancy Sinatra mod boots, she crashes through time-honored cartoon gender barriers, joining the pants-free ranks of male characters such as Donald Duck, Porky Pig, and Goofy. Braingirl’s strength is in her total self-acceptance. Nothing is subtext; all is revealed. Ramping up the Surrealist edge inherent in classic cartoons and infusing Braingirl literally turns consciousness inside out. With a sly intelligence and pop sensibility, artist Marina Zurkow has created a female cartoon character (finally!) worthy of her own series.
Visit Braingirl in Coburn Gallery
from January 22 -- February 4, 2007
and find out, once and for all, why girls love ponies.
Jessica Hunter Larsen
Colorado College Curator
“BRAINGIRL” (1999-2003)
Running Time: 30 min
Format: DVD, Quicktime
"Braingirl" is a ten-episode animated series about a mutant-cute girl who wears her insides on the outside, literally. Braingirl and her hapless sidekick Bagboy live in a world of externalized emotion, where little is hidden yet nothing is what it appears to be. A soap-opera Frankenstein with a cobbled sense of her own past, Braingirl herself is an ironic feminist object whose mental and physical posturing belies her complex motivations.
"Braingirl" is part experimental film and part pop culture blast; it explores how cartoons manifest our secret fears and desires upon the body – the instantaneous delight of accident and recovery available only in an animated world, where anything is physically possible. "Braingirl" uses the languages of clip art, interface design, and instruction manuals to turn a bit of the world inside out.
Producer, director and animator Marina Zurkow evolved the series on the web over a three year period. “Braingirl” was created with Macromedia Flash and is distributed on DVD.
CREDITS:
Created, Directed and Animated by Marina Zurkow
Music and Sound: Lem Jay Ignacio
Additional Writing: Evan Fischer, Eric Tartakoff
“Zolac” Theme Song: John Shmersal
Braingirl: Emily Twomey
Bagboy: Bee Aniram
Mommy: Michael Portnoy
Doctor, Pharmacist: Anthony Veneziale
Nurse, Woman, Robodog: Nancy Nowacek
Man: Chris Newmeyer
Neuroses: D. Sardy
COLORADO COLLEGE BRAINGIRL INSTALLATION TEAM
Noah Furman
Eugnia Ballve
Lauren Greer
Karl Fisher
Mara Smaby
Robert Snowden
Carrie Swint
Marina Zurkow:
Marina Zurkow works with character and narrative in animated cartoons, interactive installations, print and pop objects. Zurkow's recent projects include The Space Invaders, a site-specific single channel video for WNET/PBS in New York; and the seven channel animated installation, Nicking the Never, which premiered at FACT in the U.K. in 2004. She's created the award-winning episodic cartoon Braingirl, chronicling a mutant-cute girl who wears her insides on the outside; Pussy Weevil, or How I Learned to Love the War, a vile cartoon persona who reacts to a viewer's proximity; and PDPal, a public art project for screen, web and mobile devices that allows a user to “write her own city” (with architect Scott Paterson and technologist Julian Bleecker). Zurkow's icons and characters have been incorporated into films, hotel design, lightboxes and clothing.
Upcoming projects include Karaoke Ice, a truck with a persona that stages karaoke battles for ISEA/ZeroOne, the San Jose Biennial in 2006, and Funnelhead, which will be realized as a graphic novel and as an animated, sculptural installation.
Zurkow's work has been exhibited at Sundance, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, SFMoMA, Eyebeam Atelier, and bitforms gallery, and has been broadcast on MTV, Fuji TV and PBS. She is a 2005 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and received grants in 2005 from the New York State Council on the Arts, and in 2001-2002 from Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation and the Walker Art Center. She teaches at NYU's Interactive Technology Program (ITP) and lives in Brooklyn.
Links
Watch Braingirl on-line at www.thebraingirl.com.
View more of Marina Zurkow’s work at www.o-matic.com
Read an interview with Marina Zurkow at http://www.bitchmagazine.com/archives/1_01brain/brain.shtml
Tell us what you think jessica.larsen@coloradocollege.edu
