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screenplay for an animated film by Dick Tuinder

THE HUNGER

You can always tell a citizen of the Ultra City from the fact that they are constantly hungry.
They eat their food, their twisters and shakers and burgers and steaks, and after they leave, with the notion of being satisfied for a reasonable price, halfway down to the next stop the hunger visits them again. It is a hunger that, like a religious need, is never satisfied.
The photographic menu from wich they order their food and the food itself looks staged. Like an actor it tries to look like real food, but the script just doesn’t allow a convincing performance.

THE QUEU

None of the people of the Ultra City ever step out of line. They are great queuers. That’s why none of them ever noticed that the queu is actually a chaingang. Life’s course itself is a trip from one Wimpy, Wompy or Wendy to the other. This is, it seems, life. This is how you make a living. Every now and than you get of the road to worship.
This is life. And than you die. That is, than you step out of line.

THE CHANT

Television of course, is everywhere. Singing the hymns. Chanting the commercials. Calling for the worship like the muazzin. Time to eat. Time to buy. Time to go. Time to die. Time and time again. This is what you need. Look into my eyes. This is what you want. Listen to my voice. This is what you get. Please don’t zapp away from the next moment of your life.

THE REAL THING

Drugdealers from all around the world come to the Ultra City. The city that is in great need for sedation, uppers, downers, highers and lowers, anything that will temporarily polish the surface of a harsh reality. Just as the songs, from all around the world. Sampled voices and sampled sounds singing about sampled love and sampled happiness and about a mythical entity that’s called the Real Thing. People who can afford it are hunting for it. But although it is often mentioned, rarely anyone has ever had a close encounter with it. Still it has to be somewhere. Somewhere terribly close.
Around the corner, resting in the hands of the dealers. Sleeping in the darkness of the tv-set. Dreaming of an encounter with a costumor. One day. One day soon. But be aware. The’re many fake Real Things around. Looks may and will deceive. And looks are not guaranteed.

THE COST TUMOR

The cost tumor is the most commen disease in the Ultra City. The tumor developpes in the heart, but then spreads quickly to the mind and furtheron to the wallet. It feasts on the reason and savings of the peoples of the City. Those who suffer from the disease are slowly driven towards an emptyness of soul and bankaccount.
Yet, some say this terminal stage of the cost tumor actually is the real Real Thing.

THE HAVENOTS

Following the dramatic need for an antagonist the Ultra City people are sometimes confronted with the Havenots. Related, genetically, to the Hottentots, the Havenots populate Termite-like constructions that wind all along the citylimits, like a huge 10 mile deep skindisease.
Here one lives without an adress or a bankaccount. Here one lives outside the reality that is sold and bought for so much money in the Ultra City itself.
So this is how thinlayered any conception of reality is. It rarely exceeds the whidth of an interstate highway.
The people on the other side of the road have feelings and desires. They have arms and legs. Loved ones and foes. They have a past and – however short – a future. They have lust and anger and if they somehow survive for a couple of years they must have some kind of food to keep them going. So from a certain point of view these people have a lot of things and yet they are called the Havenots because they don’t have what it takes to become a legal citizen of the Ultra City wich is an adress and a bankaccount.

THE VENERIAL BAROQUE

At night the city shines like a diamond.
But one day all this will go down and the diamond and the shining will fallout into silky, meaningless ashes. One day the Havenots will be victorious and roam the Ultra City streets like scavengers.
Because one other thing the Havenots have is gravity on their side. In the end, all things will fall down.
In the meantime, starvation and a baroque ensemble of venerial diseases are the Havenots’ poormans’ cancer.

A BOY ON PLUTO

In front of a big TV screen on which the launch of an explorer mission, on its heroic way to Pluto, is broadcasted live, a young Havenot is begging for money near the traffic lights. The rythm of his life dictated by the rythm of the traffic robot. He incorperated the rythm to such an extend that it is hard to define who triggers who. If the lights are green, the cars pass by and the boy robot is turned off. When he jumps into action the lights go red. His hands shaped into a little net, the boy goes fishing along the shores of the street trying to catch a silvery dime here and there.
Most citizens pretend not to notice the boy, their eyes gaze towards the big screen that shows the exhaust of the rocket filmed with an ultra-zoom lens. Pluto… the kid… what can be done? Where is Chaplin when we need him?

A women in a car suddenly thinks of her own son, who must be about the same age as the Havenot kid. Her heart breaks for just a moment. She signals the kid, gives him some money and a candybar. A smile, ever so tired, ever so grateful and ever so ambiguous, dresses the face of the beautiful boy. In the background the rocket travels on with thousands of miles per hour, and then the robot chimes again, and the boy shutsdown and the woman is forced to drive on. Off to her life that, to the boy, most be just as far away and icely exotic as Pluto.

THE SITCOM

At night, shortly after sunset, the blessed citizens of the Ultra City lock themselves up in their houses, behind bars and gates. There they go on and whisper and watch the rockets taking off and the actors of their choice leading complete and happy lives.

THE QUESTION

Something must be done, but there is too much information for a possible clue. The meaning has escaped in a multitude of possibilities. Is Pluto a real planet or just a huge motherfuckin piece of icy rock? Second question: who the fuck cares?

ULTRA FABLES

Of all fables, the one about Freedom gained after a life of hard work, is one of the most persistant within the Ultra City limits. And so most people work for companies they learn to identify with, manufacturing things or services they learn to see as valuable. Adopting slave workhours, afraid that when they don’t do so, they will, one day not be able to be free.
(Retirement is the polite decribtion of Retards’ Heaven.)
The other fable that captivates the lifes and imagination of the citizens is the one about Happyness. Related to the idea of Freedom as they are both most commonly seen on billboards too high up in the air to be touched by human hands or in a distant untouchable future.
Both deities are worshipped through the daily sacrifice of money and time of life.
Are you happy yet? Are you free enough? Buy some more and be seduced one more time by that delicious taste of freedom and complete happyness.
Two things that catch the travellers eye upon entering the city are the slums and the billboards, advertising winners luck at one of the innumerable casino’s. Driving on, the traveller becomes aware that the casino never stops. Realizes that the Ultra City is, in actuality, the Casino itself and aware of statistics that tell us that, on average, 99,9 % of the people inside a casino are, or pretty soon will be, ultimate loosers.

THE DICE

So this is the state of the Ultra City. A gambling hall people spend their lifetime in. And everytime the dice roll the coralreef of Havenots grows a little further. For despite their plagues and numorous handcrafted low budget disasters, the Havenots are a fruitfull species. They don’t need much to grow on, and their promiscuity does not seem to be affected by the utter meaninglessness of their short and miserable lives.

THE WALL

There is no mad genius behind this all. Yes, there is madness. And there still are sparkles of perception beyond the dice. But in the end the system, once on its way, is unstoppable, and selfcontaining. That’s its genius. A Golem of mud and rock and steel and blood. A mindless monster. Not bothered by gravity or taste or the waste of, what their mothers thought of as, individual lifes. Not bothered in fact by any conciousness of an other reality as that reality is safely behind the tens of miles wide Wall of Havenots.

THE MONSTERS’ ANUS

Please. Do not think about the shithole of this monster. Please. Don’t try to imagine the size of its beek. Please. Don’t spend any thought on ts excrements and where he unloads them. You are the food. You are the beek. You are the shithole. You are the monster, and you are his shit.

Dear Mister monster,
We fed you our children. Now all we ask you is, be kind and bestow upon us the freedom to stand in line and roll the dice, and at the end of each prefab day see our choosen actors lead complete and happy lifes in a world that looks just like the things we buy.

THE HAPPY ENDING

Place: Ultra City.
Time: A friday evening in the forseeable future.

A glorious sunset behind a ragged greenish curtain of smog. Nature at work in Ultra City. Chemicals in the air break into pieces, coloring it yellow and pink and bright fresh green, dotted with electric sparkles. Lights are turned on everywhere in Ultra City. The airco’s are humming their monotumous song, much to the relief of the Ultra Citoyens.
It has been another happy day in Ultra City.
Particulary because for the 12.875th continuous day, no one has been reported questioning what they saw.

Picking up girls in bars,
meeting other ’singles’
actually means shit.

Love is something you have to conquer,
nay: steal.
Only when it is stolen, kidnapped,
taken from etc. can it mean love and be real.

It has, in other words, to be
accompanied by a feeling of loss.

Au début de cette année Aryan Kaganof a réalisé plusieurs courts métrages importants et nous allons nous arrêter cette fois à trois nouveaux. “Composition Suprématiste numéro 36” est une perle qui pourrait bien se mélanger avec les performances SM de Ron Athey ou de Johan Thom, filmées par Kaganof. Mais dans ce film la vedette nue est le cinéaste lui-même et ceci ne peut passer inaperçu. C’est une poésie extrême, récitée et filmée, qui se degage de cette perle rare. C’est un film d’initiation sophistiquée et intellectuelle aux plaisirs sadomasochistes vus d’un angle strictement artistique. Kaganof nous avait confié que cette performance intitulée “Shooting Gallery” qui a eu lieu à Grahamstown et à Johannesburg était un peu pénible pour lui. Mais il a bien accepté de souffrir pendant plusieurs jours, afin de nous laisser ce document enregistré. Pendant qu’il est suspendu nu à l’aide d’une corde, Kaganof nous récite, la tête en bas, un poème de lui intitulé “Les funérailles”. Il commence ainsi : “J’ai assisté à mes funérailles / ils jouaient cette musique céleste” et il se termine ainsi :

Dis “c’est la vie” à tous les désésperés
Dis “bon voyage” à tous les jeunes mariés
Dis toujours “je t’aime” à la personne
à côté de qui tu te réveilles
Mais mon amour
Ne dis surtout jamais “toujours”
“Toujours” est un temps très court*

*In Aryan Kaganof “Drive thru funeral”, éditions Pine Slopes, 2003, Westhoven, SA, p.23.

Pendant que le poète attaché à l’envers récite ses vers, des images très violentes de guerre se projettent sur un écran géant entrecoupées par celles d’un bébé (le poète-performer lui-même). Comme une métaphore de la naiveté qui impose toutes les guerres menées à ce jour, ce film court de Kaganof nous livre le plus fort poème visuel pacifiste et allégorique de nos jours qui ferait aussi l’apologie des plaisirs charnels extrêmes, seulement si on les regarde d’une manière artistique-alternative.

Une deuxième performance enregistrée et montée par Kaganof est celle qui s’est deroulée en 2003 à Utrecht (aux Pays Bas) avec la pianiste Tomoko Mukaiyama, Kaganof et le plasticien Dick Tuinder. Tous les trois sont les vedettes d’une autre performance musicale, littéraire et plastique (au sens large combinant la peinture avec le happening). “Trio Mental” serait le titre d’une performance élargie (expanded) qui mélange la poésie occultiste et métaphysique de Kaganof (il s’agit cette fois de son poème “In the beginning” de son récueil “Abraxas – The prophet of nothing” éditions Pine Slopes, Westhoven, 2003, p.134) avec les décors et les peintures faussement “enfantines” de Tuinder, l’interprétation au piano par Mukaiyama d’une composition libre de Ramon Dos Santos (Dick Tuinder). Kaganof se livre à une interprétation hystérique de son hymne tandis que Tuinder surveille de près les éclairages sur son environnement plastique qui ferait de lui un expert conteur-fabuliste pour adultes.

Une troisième performace serait “Mechanicus” avec, comme vedettes, les mains de son ex épouse Tomoko Mukaiyama interprétant au piano une partition bruitiste en hommage à son mari défunt. L’écran est coupé en deux ou en trois ou en plusieurs parties plus tard, la composition devenant de plus en plus compliquée. En verité la musique reste répétitive mais une sensation de culmination se dégage de cette symphonie visuelle et acoustique qui se base principalement sur le brio et l’énergie intérieure de la pianiste Mukaiyama.

portrait of aryan kaganof by dick tuinder, johannesburg, 2001