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The Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg is best known for her animated films. These may seem sweet and innocuous on first acquaintance, but in her work Djurberg addresses themes such as obsession, power, pleasure, desire and violence. In her films she creates animated, surrealistic “fables.“ Her world involves clichéd fairytales that derail into a battleground filled with death, sex and violence. Nathalie Djurberg creates her world using stop-motion, a labour-intensive technique that involves building up the film shot by shot. Made of coloured clay, the figurines are remodelled into a new pose for each shot, resulting in a jolty animation with a shaky backdrop and visible supporting threads. Imperfections in the plasticine of the figurines and linguistic errors in the texts are left uncorrected, which makes the surreal films by Djurberg more vulnerable and more human. Birthday Party is a chronicle of a wild party set within the realm of the 18th century.
