Hans Kristian Borchgrevink Hansen grew up in the woods by the norwegian/swedish border and learnt some of the principles of cut-out animation in Lofoten. This led to films like The Breakfast Eater and later on Washing, boiling, cutting, wall-to-wall carpet, vacuuming and ice fishing, both distinctly quotidian with a more and more diluted dramaturgy. Where the first one had a certain punch, the second deflated to a repetitive cycle of routines and maintenance. This progress couldn’t be helped, and in the recent Opptakt one is left with a single perpetual scene. A static but rhythmic tableau that combines slowfox and ticks, dancefloors and rugs, lampshades and flea collars.

The films are made in a primitive technique, on a self-crafted animationtable inside a tiny room with large hot lamps – here the warm and sweaty animator sits kneeling on the floor. The process usually starts controlled before it spins out of hand due to the overheated room and the painstakingly slow method. In the end product this manifests itself in the shape of irregular movements, foreign objects like fingernails in the picture frame and the sense of a varying stress level that hovers over the film like an odor.