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The Quay Brothers. Into a Metaphysical Playroom

This book and two book chapters constitute an extended project on the Quay Brothers’ films. I develop what I call a disjunctive poetics that destabilize viewer expectations of orthodox cinematic language. I develop an ontological theory of ‘generatio aequivoca’ (a central Vitalist concept in Bruno Schulz’s writings) for animated matter. The analysis uses models of art instead of communications models, is transtextual, heuristic, descriptive, and explanatory. Key cited authors include Mitry, Benjamin, Burch, Chion, Sobchack, Deleuze, Vidler, Foster, Schopenhauer. It offers methodological models for Film & Media Studies, especially reception theory, aesthetics and close analysis.

The book is a development of work presented in the following chapters:

"A Metaphysics of Space: The Quay Brothers Atmospheric Cosmogonies" in Lois Weinthal (ed.), Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory, 527-545, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. This investigation locates animation set and stage design in interior design architecture theory.

"Bruno Schulz’s ‘Generatio aequivoca’: Sites of (Dis-) Enchantment in the Quay Brothers’ Street of Crocodiles" in Catriona McAra and David Calvin (eds.) Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment, 84-97. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. This chapter contextualises the Quays' films and Schulz’s writings in wider debates around the Anti-Tale genre in film, art and literature.

This project was supported with the following grants:

£5951 AHRC Research Leave (2007).

£6979 sabbatical; £1530 + £585 travel grants, £2400 publ. costs (all University for the Creative Arts)