David Claerbout 

The Pure Necessity

Rather than telling the story of a little boy abandoned in the middle of a jungle, far from civilisation, David Claerbout’s take on the animated movie classic from 1967 turns the sentimental and comic story about dancing, singing, and trumpet-playing jungle animals into a film that dispenses with all humanization of the animals, and even with its human protagonist Mowgli. The animals behave instead in a manner befitting their species. Ball, Bagheera and Kaa, whose songs and slapstick acts have been delighting children and adults alike for decades, are now back to being pure bear, panther and python.

For his 2016 animation film The Pure Necessity, David Claerbout and a team of professional artists painstakingly redrew the frames of the original movie by hand, one by one, and then assembled them to create an entirely new film. Now devoid of narrative, the animals move amidst the jungle as if the story were of their own making.

The Pure Necessity, a video exhibition by David Claerbout at Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp from the 26th of May until the 14th of July 2018.