digital animation, 5´ 54´´, 16:9, mp4, 2022
Song „Susi“ by Tini Bot, Dancer Rika Yotsumoto, Animation and Editing Omani Frei, Animation and Symbols by Nina Behnisch
Susi stands for people without shelter. People who often lose the fight againstaddiction, people with dreams, love, hopes and a story.
The video combines four different levels. The starting point is the song "Susi" by singer-songwriter Tini Bot. The dancer Rika Yotsumoto interpreted the song in her performance, while Omani Frei created the drawn animation on top of it. And finally, Nina Behnisch designed 8 animated symbols inspired by the song lyrics. All four layers together create the music video for "Susi".
S U S I – Twice an S: The combination of both S letters results in an 8 or a sign for infinity, which can be found in both circles. Two mirrored parts of one person, two sides of the same coin.
The U: Here we find Susi's soft side, inwardlooking and dreaming. Her empathy, more with her daughter than with herself. The U absorbs, but in the animation they disappear again and again, withdraw into the invisible for us.
The I: It shows Susi's hard side. Developed through her experiences and adventures, the necessity to fight, pressed together by the outside world. Piece by piece it is hardened in order to be able to counter the increasingly heavy life.
The following patterns differ in colour as partial aspects of Susi's character, her story or also the world around her.
A soft side of her life is her dreams. The hopes of a different life that she will probably never lead. Escape, love, the sea. It is soft and alternates between retreating inside and pushing and shoving outwards. Again and again these thoughts spin in Susi's head.
Is life a game? With the same cards always being reshuffled? Maybe we start with a good almost large selection, but again and again it becomes one card less. With every decision you make, every restriction imposed on you that you can't fight. In the end, Susi can only play with the cards she has in her hand.
The small flame and the almost empty gas. Susi burns a little longer for life, for hope. The warmth is unsteady, but still there in an everyday cycle almost lost, almost overlooked.
We all fight our battles, have our weapons,have our swords. Both carry their swords, they interlock with each other, because in a way it is a common struggle that each fights in his own way. Yet there is an imbalance in the forms, for Susi's harder fight.
Susi's tears and sadness. Her shifting emotions withdraw into her, only to push outwards again. In contrast to her hardened sides, Susi's inner life is revealed, a remaining connection to the past, an idea of what used to be, a nostalgia for the buried then.
Susi's harsh voice. She pushes, she counters. Most things in her life are hard and that hardens her. Again and again she comes up against limits, a constant resistance, by now against everything, even the soft sides in life.