Rainbow Narcosis
2012 · 9m · USA
Directed by Jonathan Monaghan
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
A nine-minute 3D animated video work depicting a headless lamb navigating a series of surreal environments including the Palais Garnier and a modernist loft, oscillating between photorealistic and video game aesthetics to probe the blurred boundary between reality and mediated experience.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Monaghan's game engine aesthetic isn't stylistic posturing — the headless lamb moving through Haussmann interiors is doing something precise about luxury culture and its constitutive violence. The Palais Garnier setting earns the New Frontier slot.
Headless lamb wanders the Palais Garnier in early-2010s 3D animation. Conceptually intriguing; technically dated in a way that no longer reads as commentary.
Jonathan Monaghan's headless lamb wanders the Palais Garnier and luxury interiors — wealth and taste rendered as uncanny-valley horror. Early Ed Atkins territory but with more architectural specificity. Genuinely strange.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2013