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Abstract(s)
In "The Piano Tuner of EarthQuakes" (2006), the Quay Brothers' second feature, the sensual form and the meta-artistic content are truly interweaved, and the siblings' staple animated materials become part of the theme itself. Using Michel Serres's argument in "Les cinq sens" (2014), I address the relationship between the Quays intermedial animation and the way the art forms of music, painting, theatre and sculpture are used to captivate the film viewer's sensorium in the same way that some of the characters are fascinated by the evil Droz, a scientist and failed composer who manipulates machines and people alike, among them Felisberto, a meek piano tuner with the ability to stir the natural elements. I posit that the entire film is an allegory of animation. The Quay’s haptic construction of a three-dimensional world which they control artistically is replicated in the film in Droz's and Felisberto's activities vis-à-vis Malvina van Stille, an abducted opera diva who is kept in a suspended animation state (just like a marionette) and several hydraulic automata, some of them made up of an uncanny assortment of body parts. The artificial life of these creatures is contrasted with their physical reality as beings that exist in the world. Firstly, via Serres's sensorial strategy to transform a body into a conscious entity (i.e., endowed with a soul), an embodiment I call 'Corpo-Reality'. Secondly, by resorting to Deleuze and Guattari's theory of the body without organs (BwO) in its advocacy of 'hard' nature and the rejection of a rigid assortment of body parts (either biological or social). However, just as in the story things are not what they seem, so the film itself can be a 'crystal-image' (per Gilles Deleuze), offering itself to the senses of the spectator.
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Keywords
Quay Brothers Allegory of animation Intermediality Senses Corporeality BwO