Sugar City
Animation by Gabi Moncayo
Sugar City
Thoughts/Inspiration
Although I’m very big on concept I want to say that they are free of interpretation. I use surrealism to adress pressing questions. I believe art isn’t a newspaper with explanations and writing everywhere, it speaks to the mind. It also belongs to the viewer and should be free of the artist view. Artists should not explain everything and instead let the work speaks for itself, even if it speaks differently then intended. I will explain my train of thoughts, but if it resonated differently for you then in no way would I want to impose my vision on you. This is why I didn’t put label on stage or words in the background for each character. I wanted to take the viewer on a journey; wherever they went doesn’t matter to me. As long as they were intrigued and identified in some way to the piece.
The sugar city was the most important thing for me.Thoughts/Inspiration
Although I’m very big on concept I want to say that they are free of interpretation. I use surrealism to adress pressing questions. I believe art isn’t a newspaper with explanations and writing everywhere, it speaks to the mind. It also belongs to the viewer and should be free of the artist view. Artists should not explain everything and instead let the work speaks for itself, even if it speaks differently then intended. I will explain my train of thoughts, but if it resonated differently for you then in no way would I want to impose my vision on you. This is why I didn’t put label on stage or words in the background for each character. I wanted to take the viewer on a journey; wherever they went doesn’t matter to me. As long as they were intrigued and identified in some way to the piece.
When all those politicians get together and decide the future of our world, in events like the cop 21 or cop 26, it all feels so surreal and ridiculous. They go in front of the red carpet, they take a few photos, they give a ridiculous press conference speech, then they gather around a long conference table. No one knows what really happens, for all I know they could be talking over tea...
Politicians are essentially a bunch of white men in suits that we haven’t necessarily chosen yet are making decisions that are going to impact our daily lives, the future of our families.
I imagined a scenario where each politician was portraying a traumatic event of the year 2020 and were destroying the world over tea. I was inspired as mentioned in the zoom call by the film by Jaco van Dormael, “Dieu existe et habite a Bruxelles, le tout nouveau testament” which translates as God exists and live in Brussels. God is portrayed as a mean man, living in his tower with maquettes of the entire world, he plays with the maquettes, he makes it rain, he lights them up, he plans a car crash with toy cars and then all of that happens in real life.
2020 felt as the end of the world, events were falling upon earth like meteors, one by one. And I often have the feeling, of being a pawn part of someone else’s game. Here the super-powers are getting together over tea, and sinking the world with their powers and decisions.
Why a teaparty? Why a sugar? Why a City?
I live in England, and when someone calls for the iconic teatime I immediately picture endless towers of victoria sponge cakes, muffins and sandwiches at Fortnum and Mason, with a waiter waiting for the call . This unecessary meal felt like the perfect context to gather all my characters.
Why sugar? To me sugar has a sickening effect. It feels like a demonstration of consumerism . And everything that is wrong in this world. Towers of sugars, felt like the perfect demonstration of ostentiousness, a bit like people dining in silver plates with their house overlooking a slum. It gives me a bit Marie Antoinette vibe, the french queen said before the french revolution “they don’t have anything to eat, let them eat cake”. The excessiveness of Charlie and the Chocolate factory by Roahl Dahl and the adapted movie version by Tim Burton are constently in my mind. The chocolate fountains... the candy island... It’s like Hansel and Gretel, all a trap.
Somehow Tim Burton has picked up the major societal problem, illustrating so perfectly the inequalities and unjustices.
Why a city? I lived in a slum for voluntary purposes in India, and the big city and the urban has ever since never ceased to inspire me. I have built during lockdown 2020 a slum out of cardboard for one of my short films. It feels like cities are portraying the whole world, every cultures and personalities, just look at the diversity of London. This depiction of the world feels much more real then portraying the world under the symbol of a planet or pictures of nature. I guess it could be because i always lived in cities?!.
To me everyone can identify to someone at a window, although not everyone has windows...
My city in cardboard made during lockdown with cardboard boxes, floating in a pond over water bottles, and with candles inside.
This is the design for the table that will support the sugar city, the conference table.
Since the performers will be pouring water out of their teapot onto the city, the water will be collected inside the table. So the table will act as a recipient. The water will then come out of the table via taps and into the mugs. Then they will drink the tea, “squeezed out” of the world.
I initally wanted vintage taps of all kinds and of all colours but it was too complicated to do so we went for basic plastic taps instead.
We had to deliver it by Truck to CSM which was super expensive, 50£. This is Cos helping me to store it in M103 the office, where i’m going to build the sugar city. Unfortunately we were scared that the waterproof paint wasn’t going to be enough so we couvered it in plastic, the two tables are a total of 6 metres roughly.
This is me welding a grid in the metal store, to fit on the table and for my sugar city to rest on. I welded strip by strip onto the grid.
I had to stick cube by cube with a glue gun, resulting in countless burns.
I was concerned about building height to render an effect on stage. The transport downstairs in the lift was okay, it collapsed mainly when it was backstage and people wacked it when moving stuff. Still, It was surprisingly quite solid. I had to make a lot of columns to support the weight though.
When some buildings collapsed I had to rebuild them one by one until the show. Rebuilding from leftovers was actually much more challenging then starting anew, because I couldn’t remember where each piece belonged. Obviously, they collapsed in chunk of sugar which was very difficult to reuse.
Taking them through the lift
Painted the taps in neon so that it glows under the UV lights.![]()
