About the Liminal Soup Blog
I’ve decided to start a blog. But why a blog and why liminal and why soup?
I’ve spent the majority of the past 25 years working in experimental modes of filmmaking (including experimental animation and experimental documentary), so this blogging thing is new territory for me. But again, why blog and why now?
On Perfection
Something about the phrase, “nobody’s perfect” bothers me. The roteness with which people utter the phrase gets under my skin, yes, but what I think bugs me even more is that the phrase implies that there is a perfect out there - an ideal form, without flaw against which people can never measure up. But what does this even look like?
Maybe Your Art is Not for This World
I’ve been making films for a while so I occasionally get the question, “what advice do you have for young filmmakers?”
I’m not young. I’m not old . . . but I’m definitely not young.
My first advice would be, “you shouldn’t take my advice,” but aside from that, if there are some wisdom nuggets the reader finds useful, great!
Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part II
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka to discuss some fascinating developments around the topic of UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) within the cultural sphere. The concept of UAPs might be more familiar to most under a previous term, UFOs (though the UFO term doesn’t capture the full spectrum of the phenomena).
Diana Walsh Pasulka Interview : Part I
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka to discuss some fascinating developments around the topic of UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) within the cultural sphere. The concept of UAPs might be more familiar to most under a previous term, UFOs (though the UFO term doesn’t capture the full spectrum of the phenomena).
Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part IV
Speculations about the future don’t accurately predict the future as much as they reflect the collective mindset of the present.
Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part III
December 21, 2012 - the end date of the 5,126-year Mayan long count calendar. Planetary destruction of a cosmic new age? As modern, non-Mayans, with little to no understanding of the Mayan culture, cosmology, and concept of time, some of us scoffed, some of us were were perhaps disappointed, and I’ll venture to guess most of us paid little attention when this date passed and delivered neither of the above outcomes.
. . . Then again, the last ten years have been freakishly weird. I have playfully speculated to a few that the world as we knew it really did end and we’re in some surreal alternate timeline.
Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part II
I’m not here to promote the alternative theories that blossomed in YouTube’s fertile soil during the early days, but I’m not interested in trying to debunk them, either. Getting caught up in facts and factual inaccuracies might have meant that I missed some of the archetypal longings of these videos.
Neither Believing nor Disbelieving: Impossible Futures, Conspiracy Theories, Aliens, and More: Part I
The internet is a seductive electric playground where alternative facts coexist with mythical truths.
Why I Make Environmentally-Centered Films but Am Not Interested in Saving the Earth
I have tried to come to terms with industrialization as well as the urban and suburban sprawl it produces. I do this by thinking of the ever encroaching human development as nature in a different form. And it really is, I suppose. In a sense, everything our species creates is a garden of sorts. But instead of growing tomatoes and lettuce, some gardens produce chemical plants, skyscrapers, and Starbucks.
Stories Beyond Perspective
Just as I have been thinking about the limitations of materialist reductionist science, I have also started wondering about the limitations of perspective. Perspective plants one at a specific place and time. The viewer is a finite being with a limited view on the world.
In “Revelation to the Disembodied” I experiment with creating a story structure beyond perspective where the viewer is in multiple places with two different identities at once.
Speaking as Trees
I read somewhere that humans share 50 percent of DNA with trees. To compare this with our more closely related but still distant cousins, we also share 98.8 percent of DNA with chimps, 98 percent with pigs, 90 percent with cats, and 84 percent with dogs. On the lower end, we share 26 percent of our DNA with yeast and 25 percent with daffodils.
On Hope in Speculative Fiction
I was recently asked the question “Would you say that this is a hopeful film?” at a film festival q&a regarding my latest science fiction animation. I sensed from the person asking the question that they truly wished my answer to be “yes.”
Old Stories, New Interpretations : The Garden of Eden (Part III)
The concept of “myth” is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a piece of bacon.
Old Stories, New Interpretations : The Garden of Eden (Part II)
Forbidden Zones:
Growing up, Saturday trips to the downtown library were something of a family requirement - and I was not a reader.
Old Stories, New Interpretations : The Garden of Eden (Part I)
I was never really interested in the Judeo-Christian creation narrative involving the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.