In honor of Shaun Brady’s cover story on filmmakers the Quay brothers, the Clog will be bringing you more from the Quays all week long.

Now that you’ve gotten familiar with the Quay’s body of work (did we mention it was Quay Week?) let’s bring it all the back to 1979 for their first film Nocturna Artificialia. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art (now UArts), the bros headed off to London’s Royal College of Art to study illustrations but began making short films in their spare time. Their process has not changed much since then:

From the beginning, their working method has been “completely democratic,” they say. “We each build the puppets, we each animate, we each make the décors. That’s the best way to make the errors which create discovery points. We’ve never been frightened by making errors because I think that gives pause for a kind of deconstruction and reconstruction of the plan — or the lack of a plan. We always have a very clear intention, we just keep it kind of diffuse.”

And thus begat Nocturna Artificialia:

In honor of Shaun Brady’s cover story on filmmakers the Quay brothers, the Clog will be bringing you more from the Quays all week long.

Despite the inherent experimentation in their work, the Quays are suprisingly connected to the pop cultural mainstream. On Friday, you got a chance to see some Quay-related music videos from the likes of Michael Penn and Peter Gabriel. But, as Brady points out in his cover story, the Quays also authored art breaks for MTV (you remember, those crazy super short films between music videos). Check one out below:

Furthermore, two entries into their “Stille Nacht” series doubled as videos for the moody, experimental His Name is Alive. Commissioned by the band’s record label, 4AD, to create videos the Quays were allowed to choose the songs they wanted to animate, settlling on “Are We Still Married?” and “Can’t go Wrong Without You.” The craziest thing is how well the two commisioned videos fit within the series. The musical themes carry throughout Stille Nact I and II, even though the latter was commissioned after the first one was made. Stille Nacht V is different from the rest (music is from Sparklehorse, song is by Tom Waits). The video was made for Sundance’s Sonic Cinema program but a lot of the visual motifs remains. You can check out the entire series after the jump.

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In honor of Shaun Brady’s cover story on filmmakers the Quay brothers, the Clog will be bringing you more from the Quays all week long.

While you may not be immediately familiar with the Quay name, you’ve most likely seen their work, or at least the their influence exerted on others. Most famously, this comes out in their music video work. Shaun Brady explains:

They’ve also maintained a sideline career producing music videos and television commercials. Their work has graced MTV — in the days when they actually played music videos — in pieces for His Name Is Alive (“Are We Still Married,” “Can’t Go Wrong Without You”), Michael Penn ["Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)"] and 16 Horsepower (“Black Soul Choir”), as well as sections of Peter Gabriel’s groundbreaking “Sledgehammer” video and promos for the station itself. Their work has strongly influenced other video directors, most famously Fred Stuhr’s early-’90s videos for Tool, often mistakenly cited as the Quays’ own work. They have also designed sets for opera and theater productions and provided a short sequence for Salma Hayek’s biopic Frida.

Because it’s Friday, I think we all need a little rockin’ out before the day is through. Videos after the jump.

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Friday: “I’m not filthy,” Comedian of comedy/one-half of the Gigantic, Orange and Gay duo/that creepy mail dude from Just Shoot Me Brian Posehn tells Katie Karas, “I’m just being silly and juvenile.” Get on the Posehn train tonight at Helium Comedy Club. Because he’s claiming to be clean, you’re gonna need to get down and dirty with ?uestlove and Kevin Kong at the 7 Year Anniversary party at 32° Luxe Lounge. Let Gair show you the way: “All this for no cover is pretty damn good peoples, go n’ get ya groove on!”

Saturday: While this is undeniably awesome:

… it should not be the only reason you know who Gwen Ifill is. Get yee to the Free Library to hear her (and not Queen Latifah) hawk her new book about the new age of black politicians. Then head over to UArts where you can get up close and personal with the wide, weird world of twin animators the the Quay Brothers. Want to get a little more familiar with their work before heading out? Check out Quay Week on the Clog!

Sunday: Tragedy of tragedies! Today is your, ahem, Last Chance to catch the excellently titled Do Unto Other Then Run Like a Mother (“It’s hard to tell if Josh Rickards truly loves the ’70s, or just enjoys poking fun at them.”) at Vox Populi AND Lookin’ for Love … Not Just the Brotherly Kind (“While diverse, the works are all sensual, playful and humorous — which may be as good a definition of love as we can get.”) at Highwire. Then it’s off to the Convention Center (NOM NOM NOM CONVENTION CENTER HUNGRY!) for a Taste of Italy at the Flower Show. Local chefs will try their hand at regional Italian cuisine, in addition to cooking with edible flowers and seeds. Ciao Weekend!

In honor of Shaun Brady’s cover story on filmmakers the Quay brothers, the Clog will be bringing you more from the Quays all week long.

There are a lot of excellent parts in Shaun Brady’s cover story this week. We’re not gonna lie to you, it’s pretty great. But one of the most striking aspects comes at the beginning:

“The fairy tale village of Norristown!” laugh the Quays. “Well, it is called Fairview Village.”

Yeah, it’s cool and all they’re from Norristown, but let’s focus on that quote attribution: “laugh the Quays.” Both of them? At the same time? Brady continues later in the story:

“The sound of crickets, definitely, and lightning bugs,” muse the Quays over the phone from their London studio (there’s no point in trying to identify which of the brothers is speaking — not only is it virtually impossible to tell their voices apart, but rarely does a sentence begin and end in the same mouth).

All together now: WOAH. But it gets better, such as in this paragraph:

The duo share uncannily similar tastes and interests, even going so far as to cut books in half when they were younger, one starting from the beginning, the other from the middle, and then switching off. “We didn’t want to go out and buy two,” they claim. “Now we just wait for the other to finish it.”

They shrug off the mythology associated with being twins, insisting they become aware of the fact only when others draw it to their attention. But it has led to an intimate and productive collaboration. “It’s the greatest chance encounter,” they say.

These guys are like a Mary Ellen Mark photo come to life and while Brady does a stellar job of animating their almost-preternatural connection, you really have to see it to believe. Below, watch the Quays in 2006 interview, where they talk a little bit about their early days in Philadelphia. Notice how they never identify themselves.

This interview below is a nice little intro to the Quays, but if you skip to the end, you get a sense of what Brady is talking about when writes that a sentence rarely begins and ends in the same mouth.

They also talk about how music plays a part in their films in the above interview. A harbinger of things to come? Check back for more Quay Week!

Stephen and Timothy (or Timothy and Stephen) in their studio.

Courtesy of UArts

In this week’s cover story, Shaun Brady goes inside the world of the Quay brothers, identical twin animators from straight out of Norristown. But you really need to see their films to believe them, especially when they garner this description:

A harlequin on a tricycle is sadistically bent on capturing a strangely beautiful winged creature in elaborate and brutal traps. Disembodied hands quiver over vibrating strings while an intricately configured device goes through laborious but unexplainable machinations. A wooded island is inhabited by a mad scientist intent on building an orchestra of musical automata. A woman scrawls endless rows of text with pencil nubs while outside, a harsh play of light resembles an apocalyptic borealis.

Woah. That’s why all this week on the Clog, we’ll be giving you a daily dose of Quay. Check back all this week for short films, interviews and music videos from our very own animation innovators.

First off, though, who are these guys? Brady explains:

For the past 30 years, the identical twin animators have been locked away in their London studio, creating worlds that are equal parts fairy tale and nightmare, miniature and operatic, timeless and immediate. Though much of their work, a body of acclaimed short films and a pair of compromised but fascinating features, is drawn from the texts of central European literature, it’s as purely visual an experience as a vivid hallucination or a lucid dream.

In person, Stephen and Timothy Quay are the rare artists who actually seem to exist within the imaginary landscapes they’ve invented. Sharing the same mane of graying, mad-scientist hair and speaking in a half-accent shared by affected Shakespearean actors, the pair perpetuate every curious stereotype about twins, sharing a hive-mind, finishing each other’s sentences, conjoined in all but physiognomy.

Watch a film by the Quays after the jump.
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