Aaron Dylan Kearns

@eyeodyssey.bsky.social

193 Followers 126 Following

Atlanta born and raised underground artist: Avant-garde filmmaker, noise artist, comic author, collage artist, obscure media aficionado. https://linktr.ee/eyeodyssey

Life in the Zashikiro: A Discussion with Hiroshi Harada: An in-depth interview with Hiroshi Harada of the independent Kiryukan production company: covering his filmography, personal history, political views and more...
Intravenus Poster Version 1: drawn by Aaron Dylan Kearns.
The headmaster looking over an IV bag.
A distorted long shot that shows the headmaster (Joshua Haire) approaching Rudolph (Chandler Balli) and Comet (Lawson Reis) in a derelict infirmary. Comet is contorting on the ground in pain as Rudolph watches in fear.
A Fututrist-reminiscent dish comprised of an indecipherable white creamy substance with salad leaves spread throughout. An eyeball is sticking out from the middle in a slit filled with jam with two pieces of metal as the outer structure.
Another shot of the full cast. The headmaster (Joshua Haire) is no longer at the podium but rather standing at the side of a TV that's displaying abstract medical imagery. Rudolph (Chandler Balli) is playing with an antique horse marionette on the table out of boredom.
Brice Anthony Heller, Lawson Reis and Chandler Balli as they appear in Intravenus, acting as Hermey, Comet and Rudolph respectively. The three stand in a stairwell facing a derelict industrial doorway.
Rachel Walker and Brice Anthony Heller as they appear in the film Intravenus, appearing as Clarice and Hermey respectively. Clarice is laying on the classroom's floor, facing up to the ceiling as she speaks to Hermey. Said shot is in black and white.
An earlier shot of Hermey (Brice Anthony Heller) in the darkened classroom. The Anatomical Venus projection isn't visible on the wall yet. He's holding the anatomical model puppet above him by its throat, striking a dynamic pose in the process.
Rachel Walker and Brice Anthony Heller as they appear in the film Intravenus, appearing as Clarice and Hermey respectively. Clarice is seated at a table decorated with macabre pieces of medical ephemera as Hermey stands in the back with a measuring tape. The two are in an antiquated classroom. Said shot is in black and white.
Rachel Walker and Brice Anthony Heller as they appear in the film Intravenus, appearing as Clarice and Hermey respectively. Clarice is looking up to Hermey (who is nearly offscreen) as they crouch over a stream to watch their own reflection. Clarice is looking up to Hermey, her face being illuminated by the moonlight overhead. The shot is filmed in black and white with a nocturnal green color tint over it.
Rachel Walker and Brice Anthony Heller as they appear in the film Intravenus, appearing as Clarice and Hermey respectively. The two protagonists are stood in a defensive stance in a hallway that ominously extends past the viewer's point of view. Said shot is in color.
PANEL 1 - Shot of a hand knocking on a door. PANEL 2 - The door opens. PANEL 3 - The door is answered by Little Jenny, a small girl who appears to just be a toddler. A taller teenage girl with an emaciated build is standing outside, Little Jenny just barely reaches the unknown girl’s knees. The two are both dressed rather formally. PANEL 4 - Little Jenny: {Turning her head in curiosity.} “Who the hell are you?” PANEL 5 - Girl Outside (Susan Spotless): “Good mornin’-er-uh-afternoon. No wait it’s still 8AM. But, uh, you may not know me b-but I’m your big sis! Know you didn’t know you had a big sis, but then again neither did I! Oh! And the name is Susan Spotless! Funny name right? It’s a funny story! I... uh...” Susan Spotless nervously shakes in place, spinning her finger around as she attempts to gather her thoughts. PANEL 6 - Little Jenny stares back, unimpressed. PANEL 7 - Susan Spotless: {Lowering her hands in embarrassment.} “May I come in please...”
The front cover to Killing Joke's Pandemonium.
A photo of myself in an area completely whitened out by snowfall. I'm dressed in a pea coat with an umbrella in hand. There are some snowflakes falling in the foreground.
A primitively-crafted Sharpie illustration of a notably yellow snowman skiing down a similarly yellow snowy field with what appears to be the words "Anz Umr" written over it in purple ink. There are music notes around this post-Polish writing, suggesting that it's supposed to be sung.
A frame from the 1964 Rankin Bass stop motion animated film Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. The frame depicts the protagonists standing in a field surrounded by toys that had long since been abandoned by god’s light (god in their late-capitalist realm presumably being General Electric, who financed the original airing of the film).
A black screen with text on it that says "1 like = 1 favorite album".
"The Face Of Oblivion" is an homage to the creative ground zeroes of the original surrealist movement, drawing direct conceptual inspiration less from the theorists of the movement than the filmmakers and authors who were brought into it from how they already put the movement’s ideologies into action despite having no familiarity with it. Figures like Luis Buñuel and Georges Bataille along with elements of the Japanese psychological ’erotic grotesque nonsense’ mysteries of Edogawa Ranpo and Yumeno Kyūsaku that uncannily paralleled it along with elements of absurdism. While some branches attempt to harshly differentiate the movements from their coexisting scenes, the fact is that they’re all more or less branches of the same underlining zeitgeist. These movements all came from a place of political motivation, with surrealism specifically being an extreme poetic form of political action. "The Face Of Oblivion" is meant to be an abstract form of political action in that same way, which is why I want people to go into it with no preexisting expectations. It’s enough of a direct drawing from the ambiguities of the subconscious that its effects are unique to each viewer… …The balance between absurdist humor and unsettling horror varies from person to person.
A black and white production still from the 2022 short film The Face of Oblivion. A set of "deaf wind chimes" (a surrealist found object sculpture) is dangling from a tree. Computer wires are emerging from it.
"Your movie is a very fascinating labyrinth world. The multiple layers black dream is very beautiful. Sounds echoing in the heart, fear of the near future, floods of attractive images... It was a fresh encounter." - Hiroshi Harada (Political filmmaker, animator, activist) Direction, cinematography, editing, sound design and music : AARON DYLAN KEARNS Acting : ALLISON MAIER, ERIC OLIVER, C. COREY GUPTON, AARON DYLAN KEARNS, BEN HOLST Screenplay : AARON DYLAN KEARNS Dialogue : JULI MARIA KEARNS, STEVEN CLINE, HAZEL CLINE, AARON DYLAN KEARNS Costuming: STEVEN and HAZEL CLINE (Mask making), AARON DYLAN KEARNS (Design and mask painting) CG modeling and rendering: LORELEI NUYTS Marching drums : COLIN AGNEW Assistant director, secondary camera : JULI MARIA KEARNS Production assistant : MARTIN KEARNS Special thanks : ADAM BRUDNICKI, DARRELL TANGMAN, HIROSHI HARADA
While it's not intended to be a direct adaption, the film shares the concept of a narrative being communicated through subconscious territory. Instead of having conventional scenes, locations are dissected with extensive sequences showing closeups of architecture while acted segments are intercut with crash test videos and pornographic film excerpts. All while providing hints of a dystopia where market researchers observe as a dissociated late-capitalist public resort to violence as a means to exorcize their commercially instilled urges to consume. It's the story of an experiment gone too far as the psychoanalytical roots of advertising hit their natural conclusion in the rendering of humans into products, with the intended viewer being unknown to the audience as it appears to be made in concern to an unknown third party.
While it wasn't a thing I fully realized until later after "Kafka's" completion, I wanted to incorporate sequential collage into filmmaking as a way to directly encapsulate through montage the ways the brain naturally cycles through thoughts. It's a practice I still keep up to this day, as recently as "The Face of Oblivion" I've inserted (or recreated to my best ability) images that my mind naturally associated with certain scenes and narratives, no matter how disjointed and random they may appear. I wanted to make films that directly manifest what the audience would remember, where the film is the stream of consciousness itself with the narrative spread throughout rather than a movie the mind picks apart and pulls the most memorable images from after the fact.
FIVE YEARS OF KAFKA’S SUPERMARKET: ORIGINALLY RELEASED JUNE 28th, 2019 Today is a bit of a special day personally since it marks half a decade since the release of "Kafka’s Supermarket". While it’s a varied mix of conceptual influences, it’s no secret that the film is an extended homage to J.G. Ballard’s writings, namely his 1970 novel "The Atrocity Exhibition".