MOCA Toronto and TIFF Wavelengths are pleased to present Brain Worm, a short-film programme curated—and presented in person—by MOCA exhibiting artist, Alex Da Corte. The programme features iconic animators and filmmakers such as Len Lye, Norman McLaren and Ericka Beckman. It focuses on hand-crafted animation and DIY special effects that build tactile worlds on a 2D plane.
Tickets are currently sold out, but check back on TIFF as more tickets may be released!
“The films in this programme take great interest, as I do, in the bridge between the physical world and the space beyond the screen.
Everything in this programme is made, with hands, in the world. The thousands of found forms cut by Caroline and Frank Mouris for Frank Film; the bologna sausage I cut with scissors in Chelsea Hotel No. 2. Everything performs to the rules of that world. Gravity dictates Cheryl Donegan’s reaction to the flowing spurt of milk in Head; the bleached plastic and emulsion of Len Lye’s Rainbow Dance is a symptom of the sun, of chemistry, of time.
After everything is made, everything is flattened. Now it exists somewhere else, away from our hands. Watching these films, we move between the worlds of touch and the worlds of the untouchable. A brain worm is an idea or a creature that travels from the place of logic and accountability, our reality, into a place whose contours cannot be measured or defined. Where is Dots? Where is Asparagus?
We contain multitudes. There are the facts of us, shown on our shell, and the imagined version of us that lives, unreachable, beyond that screen.”
– Alex Da Corte
Caroline and Frank Mouris collected over 11,000 magazine images for five years to create Frank Film. This Oscar-winning short film combines personal and cultural elements, reflecting Frank Mouris’ journey as an artist while capturing 1970s iconography. The familiar images, organized by theme, form a hypnotic, moving collage that transcends the mundane.
Restored 35mm print.
Cheryl Donegan’s Head is a bold, low-tech performance video, embracing sex and fantasy. Set to pop music, Donegan engages in an autoerotic act, catching, swallowing, and spitting milk in a provocative sequence. The final scene, an “Action Painting” of sorts, blurs the lines between passion and crime, subject and object.
This animated and surreal film follows a faceless woman navigating a dreamscape filled with phallic imagery and sexual symbols. As she conjures and transforms objects in vibrant colors and provocative shapes, her imagination expands, leading to bizarre visions and experiences.
Directed by Norman McLaren, Dots is an early abstract experimental animation featuring a rhythmic interplay of dots and sound. The film’s “simple” approach uses hand-drawn dots that pulse and dance to an electronic soundtrack, creating a mesmerizing visual experience of an ever-changing universe.
Colorful geometric shapes move rhythmically in Komposition in Blau. Director, Oskar Fischinger, used small three-dimensional wooden cubes and cylinders, some painted or fabric-covered, to create this film. His elements glide, spill, and bop across the screen, their reflections and speed creating an optical ballet.
“The film explores the phenomenon of when two things are perceived at the same time – as when two images combine in a double exposure. There is an ambiguity in their hierarchy. They might be perceived apart, joined together, one after the other, or one dominates the other out completely. This ‘relationship’ is what I am intuitively exploring. Film sees the unconscious neither as rational, or irrational. Film is a system of relations.” — Ericka Beckmanm, 1977
A man is seen dancing in the rain while holding an umbrella, transitioning through psychedelic-looking backgrounds. He prances, backpacks, plays tennis and guitar, across landscapes and fields of abstraction. After collapsing to the floor, a voiceover promotes the Post Office Savings Bank, emphasizing that no deposit is too small.
Inspired by musician Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel #2, Alex Da Corte’s video of the same name captures sensual scenes of manipulated everyday objects and food. Filmed during a personal moment of loss, Da Corte uses flour, soap, and other mundane items to evoke emotions like doubt and desire, transforming them into symbols of pathos and hope.
Alex Da Corte’s Slow Graffiti is a shot-for-shot remake of poet and film director Jørgen Leth’s The Perfect Human. Da Corte’s version features Frankenstein (performed by himself), exploring themes of human perfection, identity, and technological intervention. Blending pop culture, color, and humor with tragicomic elements, Da Corte navigates conflicted emotions, creating a work that moves between the absurd and the deeply reflective.