Wenzhe Xu

Wenzhe Xu, born in China, became a storyboard artist and animator while located mostly in Beijing. Wenzhe has a background of a Double Major in both Community Art and Animation at the California College of the Arts. Because of this, he developed a specific perspective to think about animation in a social context. After his BA degree, he began working as a storyboard artist in Escape Velocity Animation Studio in Beijing, which gives him a clear vision of how the animation industry works. Wenzhe has completed his MA Animation degree in the Royal College of Art, and during his studies, he has been working as a freelance animator and illustrator since 2018.

During study in the Royal College of Art, Wenzhe‘s works mostly try to deconstruct what we experience in this noisy post-truth age. Based on his experience in Community Art, Wenzhe tends to involve social subjects in his films as an inspiration. He wants to offer a new perspective to consider what is changing living in an advanced industrial society and tries to show things that we are experiencing but not aware of.

His final film, All the Blue Cats Look Like the Same Color, portrays an ongoing funeral to memorize the concept of losing vocabulary and our own voice through a series of choreographies by mannequins. It mainly focuses on how language influences our perception and on how to find the voice drowned out by the noise of the intangible machine. As the internet becomes one of the most important platforms for us to communicate, he tries to question the new language system that was built along with the development of the internet and think about which voice actually belongs to ourselves.

The Internet offers everyone an opportunity to express themselves and share their voice. However, it becomes more about expressing emotion rather than critical thinking. It gradually becomes a giant rolling trolley that drags everyone into it. And can we still keep our sensitivity to each detail of this world?

In the future, Wenzhe wants to explore the possibility of film, not just animation, and find the potential of these media to have more social influence and to research how audiences will engage with different kinds of film. He will try to get involved in feature films, documentaries, video installations and so on.

All the Blue Cats Look Like the Same Color — Password: CAT

A short film about how language influences our perception of the world. Growing internet slang language system is gradually replacing what we want to say. The film will portray an ongoing funeral to memorize losing concepts of vocabulary and our own voice through a series of choreography in a city with high-rise buildings. The funeral is held by papermen.

Credit:

Animation Assistant: Marcelina Dopierala, Ruiming Wu

Sound Mixing: Mikolaj Szatko

Sound Design: Wenzhe Xu