The Construction of ANSTALT3000

Caught in the wake of an animated pipe system, The Construction of ANSTALT3000 leads down to the limbo of wrong-headed hyper-fiction and even further to the borders of imagination, taken literally—quasi into a latently obscene in-between world defined by counter- and meta- logics. Sound dodgy? Well, it is: dodgy and frantically clever.
In fragile, billowing, animated scenes, hybrid creatures featuring rather awkward forms confront themselves and their audience with at times bizarrely humorous word, text, and body mutations. God is fabricated as a little digital heap of misery—for the sole purpose of refuting his existence—surroundings and beings deform with a consistent, level timing and in their structure recall both popular gaming scenes and the skit style of early film comedies.

Munz´s only seemingly naïve asylum and its inhabitants, highly complex in their consistent concentration, tell of the process in the title; construction and throwing over: of meanings, spaces, and no least, conventions of communication in the "digital era". They thereby have an unmistakable affinity to David O´Reilly´s grandly overflowing cinematic and imaginative worlds. By means of parody (and to serve it), an—at times error affirming—pendant is offered to the commercial—tidy—aesthetics of conventional 3D animation. A universe that pleasurably continues to give birth to itself from its own intrinsic logic and which Munz ends at the physical fusion with already introduced characters—a refreshing symbol of constructed non-perfection, similar to a "boss" in classical arcade console adventures.

(Sebastian Höglinger)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt


“Imagine me telling a joke,” an animated creature proposes. “Imagine me laughing,” counters its equivalent with a vertical mouth. Seconds later the figures vanish and are replaced by new characters in a bizarre act. A radical 3D animation in the exuberant style of the cinematic world and imagination of David O’Reilly.

(production note)


"I imagined the imagination of the limit of imagination more or less limitless. But it turned out to be the opposite". A psychotrance gallop in neurolinguistics, between psychedelic illustrations of Roscher’s monsters and laws of computer programming, between the aesthetic of David O’Reily and the psychoanalytic game, The Construction of ANSTALT3000 is the most ambitious, complex and incomprehensible animated short film that the public will have had the chance to see.

(Andrea Lavagnini)