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Experimental Animation

Linyou Xie

Linyou Xie is a visual artist, filmmaker, and 3D animator who works and lives in London. 

After finishing his BA in Visual Communication at Bauhaus Universität Weimar in Germany, he moved his creative focus on digital animation and made several different short films and video installations. His work has been shown in galleries internationally and nominated by awards such as Nowness China new talent award and Berlin Music video award. 

Most of his works are seen as a critical deconstruction of the symbolic violence in a post-colonial context, and attempt to radically problematize the new relationship between man and group under the new grand narrative. 

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Degree Details

School of Communication

Experimental Animation

Linyou’s journey at the RCA was a process of questioning his work, its function, and its personal significance.

Linyou’s graduation film makes a departure from his work’s usual dystopian themes, and offers a brand new perspective. Inspired by artists like Korakrit Arunanondchai and Wong Ping, he decided to make a film that emotionally connects with him and his life’s journey.  

Through a long process, full of doubtful thoughts, he decided to not follow the codified trends and rules, but to face his memories and experiences honestly, to make a piece that will stay with him for the next ten years.

Creating visually shocking imagery, or hypercritical content, doesn’t offer the same challenge as articulating the feeling of a certain stage of life. Not to mention the challenge of communicating that feeling to an audience. So his graduation film is an experiment he always wanted to try, but never managed to complete. 

As the work is open to interpretation, it is hard to say whether this experiment was successful. However, the completion of this film fills a gap that had always been laying in his heart. From this perspective, Linyou has successfully finished his journey at the RCA. 

We stand on the hill, proud and gentle, walking towards the unknown and death

Film still

Film still

Film still

Based on real events, the film aims to express the smallness of individual in the
torrent of time, the powerlessness when facing the unknown and death, and the
sense of melancholy when summer ends in a poetic way through 3D animation.

The mysterious train whistle is part of the unforgettable memory of the hometown
city of mine, as like the people I met there. In 2009, when I was having a
memorable summer holiday in my hometown, nobody knew that the world is going
to turn into the way it has become today.

Ten years later, when I decide to leave the city and never come back again, I
realized I have already met those people for the last time in my life ten years ago.
Along with that, a part of myself has also left after that summer. So they have
become another regret of mine left in the summer, as well as that mysterious train
whistle.

Medium:

3D Animation

Size:

12:56

In Collaboration with:

Musician
Sound Mixing
3DAnimationDeathloveMemoryPoetic
Apparatus of Greatness

Film still

Film still

Film still

Apparatus of Greatness is a short film made in Linyou's first year in the RCA.

Apparatus of Greatness is a virtual installation that keeps our society in a perfect balance. It's also a judgment machine for those ungrateful people who don't appreciate the harmony of our lovely world.

Medium:

3D Animation

Size:

4:32

In Collaboration with:

Sound Mixing

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