Alisi Telengut
An interview with experimental animator Alisi Telengut, on Indigenous worldviews, straight-ahead animation, crystals, solitude and collaboration...
The work of Alisi Telengut speaks deeply to me of nature, ritual, deep time and a connection to plants, animals and the land. Her work is full of vivid colours and wonderful textures. Surfaces crack, erupt and shift. The particles of one dream image transform into another as if in a landslide or a sandstorm. Her highly tactile animation uses paint, oil pastel, stones and crystals, plants and other materials to create a wholly involving and highly affecting vision.
As we are transfixed by her animated landscapes that are simultaneously vast and small, there is also a feeling of time standing still, or distorting. Through a combination of animation and voiceover, singing, music and sound design, Alisi’s films speak of a relationship to the world around us which is deep, ancient and increasingly threatened. We feel the filmmaker’s profound emotional connection to ways of living, working and speaking which have lasted thousands of years, and we feel the sense of imminent threat to its continuation. The films do not spell their message out, they are principally experiences to be had on a visceral, emotional and sensory level. But there is much to think about within and beyond them too. Alisi’s work is exciting and urgently necessary, compelling us to consider our interrelatedness with the world by generating a sense of connection and empathy.