Following their first collaboration the previous year with Are We Still Married? (1992), the Quay Brothers reunited with Michigan-based musicians His Name Is Alive to create the video for their 1993 single ’Can’t Go Wrong Without You’.
Very consciously a sequel to the earlier video, this recapitulates many of its central Lewis Carrollian motifs: the girl with constantly expanding and contracting height (an effect enhanced here by standing her on scales, her weight fluctuating in time with her changing size), the paddle decorated with the image of a heart and a pair of eyes, the rabit, and recurring impressions of keys, locks and dark, mysterious secrets.
But the imagery takes on an altogether more disturbing aspect as spots of blood form on the scales between the girl’s legs. A shot of a cut finger hints at a straightforward explanation, but it could just as easily be the onset of menarche. This theme of surrendered innocence is further developed via a black-clad male figure wearing a demonic mask, who seems locked in a power struggle with the rabbit, the latter trying to prevent him from obtaining a precious egg (a visual echo in more potent form of the white ping-pong ball in the earlier video).
All of this takes place in an off-kilter Expressionist world of skewed angles, doors, rickety balustrades and treacherous steps, squarely in line with The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Germany, 1919) via film noir – though the Quays add further disorienting touches in the form of glasses rolling across the ceiling and a pervasive impression that the very fabric of their universe can be unravelled by merely pulling the right thread. —Michael Brooke, BFI Screenonline
Stephen and Timothy Quay (born June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators. They are the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.
They reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London after studying illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged.[citation needed] They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. The trio formed Koninck Studios in 1980, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.
The Quays’ works (1979-present… read more
The Quay brothers are identical twin brothers born outside Philadelphia, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They studied Film and Illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art {1965-1969} followed by a Masters Degree in London at the Royal College of Art {1969-1972} where they continued their studies in Illustration and Film, particularly the latter, where they made three short animation films. Returning to America they attempted to make a living from free-lance book illustration out of New York, though economically times were difficult. In terms of their work, there was an increasing frustration with the two-dimensional graphic realm of drawing and little by little they gravitated towards wanting to create in miniature (in the manner of Joseph Cornell’s boxes) powerful three-dimensional realms, using puppets and objects through the medium of film animation. In 1978 they received a National Endowment Grant for the Arts. They travelled throughout England, Belgium and Holland researching… read more
