Tenacious Fragility: An interview with moving image artist Leslie Supnet

by Amber Christensen

Leslie Supnet began creating animated films in 2008. Although her films have screened at festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and Oberhausen, she is particularly fond of the camaraderie offered at artist-run spaces and micro-cinemas. After studying in Toronto, she has recently returned to her hometown of Winnipeg, a place that has been pivotal in the formation and expansion of her practice.

Supnet’s films revel in a sort of tenacious fragility—her early works, including How to Care for Introverts, 2010, are intimate glimpses into the internal minds of her hand-drawn characters: the cautious, the introspective, but nonetheless the resolute. Working between analog and digital, there is an affective materiality present in all of her works that creates a connective conduit between viewer and maker. Supnet’s films take pause in those fleeting moments within moments that often go unnoticed yet are imprinted and waiting, somewhere in the unconscious. The interview is an excerpt of my conversations with Leslie that took place through various social media channels and shared documents over a few days in September 2015.

Amber Christensen: As one of the founders of Regional Support Network, you work with outside curators/artists to bring a selection of films from another city or a scene to Toronto. In considering the concept of regionalism, how has your own work been influenced by the places you have lived and worked?

Leslie Supnet: I recently saw a short film by Christopher Holloran, I Came, I Saw, I Don’t Know (Veni Vidi Nescio), 2015, in which one of the subjects says, “Home is more a time than a place”. This line simultaneously blew my mind and broke my heart. My time in Winnipeg has been the most influential. It was there that I developed my ideas and moving image production strategies through a lineage of fiercely independent artists. The community there was very inspirational, and I’ve always longed to come home. Developing Regional Support Network with Clint Enns in Toronto was definitely a way in which we tried to create community in a city of 2.6 million people, while championing works from elsewhere that challenged curatorial trends. After some years being away, I’ve recently moved back to Winnipeg and I’m excited to see how this time here will shape my new work.

How (or do you) situate your work within a formalist experimental film tradition?

My work sits in a strange place: perhaps what people would call experimental animation. But the work isn’t actually experimental and I would say it’s more personal. I identify in part with the personal and lyrical film tradition that has come directly from the teachings of Phil Hoffman at the Film Farm. In Winnipeg, Sol Nagler began teaching a hand-processing 16mm film workshop at the Winnipeg Film Group after he attended Hoffman’s Film Farm in 2001. It’s from this legacy [that] I learned how to create films in [a] non-traditional way. So while I’m partly influenced by the Sheridan legacy, I’d say I’m mainly influenced by the fun formalist tradition characteristic of Winnipeg.

In addition to working with analog film, your animations are generally hand-made. Is there something that draws you to tactile mediums?

I came to animation via drawing and started out using computer software (After Effects) to make animation. While I became quite adept at it, I wanted to use my hands and touch the materials again and bring it closer to my drawing practice. Over time I became interested in analogue and the warmth it gave the work. It was also hard to not be influenced by all of the analog stuff happening in Winnipeg, such as the One Take Super 8 Event and WNDX. There are also fewer complications with analogue. If you understand light, you’re basically good to go.

Your films are highly affective, from the personal narrative of How to Care for Introverts to the wordless, image-driven First Sun, 2014—what role do emotions, feelings and the affective play in your films?

I feel the most reliable aspect about our memories are the feelings we experience at a certain time. More so than what we recall seeing, touching or tasting is how an event made us feel. In my work I try to create a space in which one can remember, whether through personal narrative or renderings of the Sun. There is a sliver of something familiar in my work that I believe people can attach to for a short moment. Life is remembering and processing, which is inherently a melancholy act. Having to remember is a difficult task. As a result, my work generally has a melancholic tone.

The sound in your non-narrative works is particularly propulsive—knowing that you often work with a collaborator on the sound design, what is your process for creating the sound?

I’ve had Clint Enns create the sound design of almost every work I’ve made. He’s been a very important part of my artistic practice as a collaborator, supporter and friend. I give him free reign and trust his aesthetic, but I do give him some guidance as to what I am feeling and what I’d like to communicate with the work. The non-narrative animations have a primal tone that can either [be] thought of as coming from a distant past or from a future yet to be seen. First Sun and Second Sun, 2014, are intended be seen as apocalyptic, and I feel the sound design gives the sense of rebirth.

There seems to be a reoccurring theme in your films, such as in Finding the Truth in the World Around Us, 2013, that often incorporates elements of the cosmological, magical and the occult—what draws you to this imagery?

When using fantasy, cosmological imagery and the supernatural, it is a way in which I can envision a different future and tap into the potential of the unknown. The supernatural has always intrigued me (I love [the] paranormal / conspiracy theory radio show, Coast to Coast), and the way it which it dismantles Western rationality, which has also been responsible for horrific crimes against Otherness. Going back to what’s alien and re-appropriating this imagery is a way in which artists can reflect on their identity and respond to various hegemonies in our real day-to-day lives.

In your earlier films you used a lot of character-based animation such as in Fair Trade, 2009, but more recently it seems like you are moving away from this.

I’ve definitely moved away from character-based representational animation, as I feel I’ve explored what I needed to explore with that medium. I still mainly see myself as an animator, and [am] currently working on hand-drawn projects that deal with fantastical landscapes: places I give existence to through making the work. Though these new animations are somewhat abstract, they still come from a personal place through a lyrical filmmaking methodology. Also I’m interested in shooting more live-action and documenting the world around me. I’m trying to teach myself to put my finger on the trigger for more than 10 seconds! As an animator, it still feels very alien.

Are there other artists’ practices that influence or inspire you?

At the moment, I’m obsessed with the artist Harry Smith, who was part of the mid-20th century American avant-garde. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms. Smith’s abstract animations are beautiful and complex film projects that delved into the surreal and the occult, using paper-cut outs, direct animation and techniques with reflections on glass that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. And animator Helen Hill: her independent spirit I find inspiring always. Any time I feel like giving all of this, I think of her.

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Amber Christensen is a researcher, librarian, and independent media arts curator. She has recently completed an MA in Media Studies from York University and holds a Masters of Library and Information Studies from the University of British Columbia. She has curated screenings with Pleasure Dome (Toronto), Saskatchewan Filmpool Cooperative (Regina, SK), Vtape (Toronto) and most recently curated an exhibition for InterAccess (Toronto).

This article was originally featured in BlackFlash Issue 33.1.