Drop That Baby Again​ (1998) by Karen Yasinsky

An animation that came from a friend’s story about her parents when they first had kids. It stuck with me because I thought maybe no one else had ever said “If you drop that baby again, I’m leaving you.” But in my animation the woman is comforted. An exploration of the stillness of domesticity. (Karen Yasinsky)

La Nuit ​(2007) by Karen Yasinsky

Puppet animation exploring the desire between the characters of Jean Vigo’s film L’Atalante (1934). Music by Winston Rice and Edwin B. Edwards (“Grampy”). Sound, Quentin Chiappetta and Karen Yasinsky. (Karen Yasinsky) 

Boys​ (2002) by Karen Yasinsky

I wanted to make an animation with boys as a change from the female focus. My first question was, what do boys do? Fight. This was the starting point for the movie. Voice, Miranda July; Sound by Tim Renner and Zac Love. (Karen Yasinsky) 

Man From Hong Kong​ (2015) by Karen Yasinsky

An internalized collage film which started with the found vacation film someone gave to me many years ago. The script I recorded for the film was resistant but the photographs of Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge and the soundtracks from Bruce Lee films attached themselves. Everyone wants to touch someone. (Karen Yasinsky)

I am the Grass ​(2019) by Karen Yasinsky

I asked Aidan, who has silent film actress qualities, to interpret the actress Lyda Borelli in Satanic Rhapsody (dir. Nino Oxilia; 1917). Fragments accumulated during a day of shooting and thinking of the power of gesture, as if language didn’t exist. (Karen Yasinsky)

Life is an Opinion, Fire a Fact ​(2012) by Karen Yasinsky

The point was to go from acts of despair towards some suggestion of serenity. The video ends in a place, through sound and image, that suggests diverse definitions of serenity (an opinion). Thanks to the American Academy in Rome. (Karen Yasinsky) 

The Perpetual Motion of My Love for You (2015) by Karen Yasinsky

A collage film slipping between narrative starts of images and sounds: May Sarton’s snapshots, a resplendent Liz Taylor, internal and external awkwardnesses, a short respite of peace and a dogged, deeply sad positivism. If this movie was a person, it would be the awkward girl, but she will never gain grace and confidence in her intelligence when older. She will forever remain in 8th grade with her frustrations and ambiguities. (Karen Yasinsky) 

After Hours ​(2013–14) by Karen Yasinsky

Intimacy and violence intersect at times. I think the way I put them together is related to the Surrealist idea of synthetic criticism and the flow of metonymy. André Breton and Jacques Vaché used to go to the movies and hop from screening to screening, watching only fragments of various films, so at the end of the day they were left with all of these marvelous images that turn into something other than what the original films intended.  When I began After Hours I had three strong images that felt the need to be together. Violence is a sub-theme in a lot of my work but with After Hours I was thinking about specific acts of violence that were going on in the world. The challenge was how do I present a general idea about violence without context or emotional involvement. Which is why I went back to puppet animation for the first time in a while. For that particular scene I was thinking about a room at the end of David Lynch’s Inland Empire. I wanted the puppet victim to be androgynous and the man with the bat to be all business. I was also thinking about sound and I had this very specific sound / image in mind – the sound of Bluebeard dragging one of his women by the hair down a flight of steps.  So when the image goes black you continue to hear the body being dragged across the floor, you hear the door close, and the suggestion of a body being pulled down stairs. The sound carries the memory of violence beyond the visual experience. (Karen Yasinsky interviewed by Mark Alice Durant: Saint Lucy)

The Lonely Life of Debby Adams (2013) by Karen Yasinsky

A portrait of a young woman waiting, visited by sounds and suggestive film fragments which conjure the slips of memory and thought, seeing and being seen. (Karen Yasinsky)
A meditation on panoptic voyeurism, performativity, privacy and objectification. (Steve Polta)