11:50min, stop motion, 2022
SYNOPSIS
Hospes is the Greek root of the word “hospitality”, “host”, “guest” and ironically “stranger”. The duality of this word’s meaning echoes the subtext associated with words we use to identity ourselves. In Hospes, a body is illustrated not through words, but as an amalgam of multi-layered meaty eco-systems.
I am often told that I appear “racially ambiguous” and asked “what are you?”, a question that demands that I name my meat, the thing that is most visibly me. This clarification of my race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. Black. Asian. Queer. Female. ultimately, tells them how to treat me.
Hospes is a 12-minute puppet stop motion that expands being towards multi-layered, transitional and diverse against contemporary social coding based in categorization. It features an amalgam comprised of a patchwork of mismatched, unnamable body pieces, stitched and tucked together with remnant material. Flayed from a containment of skin, protuberances bouncing, meaty scaffolded and rigged pieces perform a choreography of resistance in a low-lit unconfined space revealed as a corridor of opening and closing doors intent on separating and sorting the pieces.
RECENT NEWS:
New Orleans Film Festival Helen Hill Award: Animation
"Visceral and bold, full of quivering bodily elements and self-closing doors, this ambitious animation questions ideas of animacy, figuration, escape, and autonomy. Through fluent movement, striking editing, and eerie sound design, the director has sculpted and brought to life a metaphoric realm of inquiry into un-whole bodies. The jury commends the film for its innovation and excellence."
2022, Sweaty Eyeballs Jury Citation
CREW
director
Stephanie J Williams
@steph.j.williams
Stephanie J. Williams is a tinkerer and doodler. Her work primarily navigates hierarchies of taste, unpacking how “official” histories are constructed in order to understand social coding. She received an MFA in Sculpture from RISD, has shown in Fictions, part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s F-Shows exhibition series, as well as with Washington Project for the Arts, Rutgers University, |’sindikit |, Tephra ICA and the Walters Museum as a Sondheim Finalist. She has held recent residencies with Sculpture Space, Williams College and the Corporation of Yaddo. Her current projects include, Hospes, a puppet stop motion about the body as a political object supported by Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund and a DC Arts and Humanities Fellowship, and The Expectation of the Observed, a stop motion commission about unrecognized labor for Stone Quarry Art Park in Cazenovia, NY. She currently teaches stop motion as full time faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art.
sound designer
Andrew Paul Keiper
@shudderingnoisemachine
Andrew Paul Keiper (he/they) is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland. Working in sound, image and installation, Andrew's work dances across the boundaries of sound art, experimental music and sound design. Field recordings, drones, drumming and sound designed evocations of places remote in time and place commingle in Andrew’s work, inviting the audience to listen in ways they may not be accustomed to listening.
Andrew received his BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2002 and his MFA in Photographic and Electronic Media from MICA in 2016. He has exhibited nationally, including in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington DC. In 2016 and 2019 Andrew was a Sondheim Prize semi-finalist, and in 2016 won a Rubys Artist Grant. Andrew has exhibited at museums and galleries including SECCA, the Baltimore War Memorial, Ethan Cohen Gallery’s KuBe, apexart, at ArtYard, Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts and Maryland Art Place. Andrew teaches sound design and thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
colorist
Jeffrey Chance
@jchancethecolorist
Jeffrey Chance is a filmmaker, colorist and video artist. Though specializing as a Post Production Editor and Colorist, Chance frequently finds himself on sets as both Camera Operator, Cinematographer and the occasional Director.
Chance currently works as a Colorist at Irving Harvey in Manhattan, NYC.
He is extremely addicted to seltzer, and can frequently be found downing a gallon of San Pellegrino.
rig fabrication
Glen Smakula
@armaturehour
Glen Smakula is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily through animation, sculpture, and performance. Hailing from Elkins, West Virginia, he was raised on a steady diet of homemade bread, old-time music, and eavesdropping on neighbors in place of television. His work explores corridors, intersections, and awkward collisions of storytelling, mobility, physicality, environmentalism, and chaos. He currently resides in Portland Oregon, working on highly guarded stop-motion armature secrets at LAIKA Studios, and roller skating in the parking lot.
