CENOE UNDULANT

Flicker
Written By Lantana Starr

CENOE UNDULANT

by Lantana Starr

I want to talk about glamour and disgust, and how close together they actually live.

When I was building CENOE UNDULANT I kept asking myself what it would look like if a slug knew it was beautiful. Not in a compensatory way — not despite anything — but with full confidence, the way a woman in a great coat walks into a room. The answer, it turns out, is that it looks exactly like this.

The environments are pure 1980s excess — reflective surfaces, neon geometry, the kind of light that makes everything look like it costs more than it does. I put soft, glistening bodies into that world — slugs, snails, and creatures that don't exist anywhere in any field guide — and let them move at their own pace. Or not at their own pace. One of my favorite things to do is get something to do the opposite of what it's known for. The slow thing launches itself across the frame. The earthbound thing lifts off. A creature built entirely for contact with the ground suddenly has no interest in the ground at all. It works because the glamour holds — they do it with complete conviction.

Everything glistens. Everything clings a little. The morphing forms stretch into shapes that have no biological precedent and don't need one.

Fescennine's score starts spare and keeps adding to itself, layer by layer, until by the end it is almost too much — which is exactly right, because that is what the visuals are doing too.

The piece ends with a perfume advertisement. Because of course it does. If you have been watching closely, you already know why.

CENOE UNDULANT by oolooolio

A constructed fragrance exploring moisture, surface, and motion. Glossed bioforms. Mineral warmth. Synthetic sheen.Designed to cling. Designed to remain.NOTES: Mucus accord / Mineral salt / Green aldehydes / Synthetic amber / Ozone trace

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Lantana Starr

LANTANA STARR Animation, Motion, The Opposite of Expected

Lantana Starr is a self-taught animator and video artist from Texas, with a career that has covered more ground than most people's maps include. She has lived enough lives in enough places to have accumulated skills no one would think to ask her about, and she doesn't volunteer them.

She makes moving images that know exactly how beautiful they are — and exactly when to do the thing they're not supposed to do. She writes across animation, fashion, performing arts, mental health, and whatever else she has opinions about, which is most things.

She has learned, mostly, to read the room.

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