Synopsis

Lizardians is set in a future society where the genes of the salamander that allow it to regrow its limbs are combined with humans. This technology has been commercialized. In this world, human bodies are manufactured and sold as a beauty and health products. The three screens show a person hired to replace limbs, a manager at a disposal site for defective parts from a limb factory, and a company that profits from limb regrowth. Lizardians questions the value of labor, copyright, and creativity in a society where capital has gradually come to control all aspects of personal life.

Director's Comment

Lizardians was conceptualized after encountering international media coverage of two incidents that occurred in quick succession in 2010—a series of employee suicides at the Foxconn factory and industrial park in Shenzhen, China and revelations that workers in the semiconductor industry had been diagnosed with or died from nonhereditary maladies and rare illnesses including miscarriages, heart disease, and cancer in South Korea since the mid 1990s. At the time, Taiwanese multinational contract manufacturer Foxconn was the largest producer of electronic parts for global corporations such as Apple, HP, Blackberry, and Nokia, producing parts for smartphones, computers, and other ubiquitous electronic devices used around the world daily. Many of its workers relocate from rural areas to Shenzhen at a young age to make money to support their families back home. Working notoriously long hours doing tedious labor for low wages, Foxconn workers suffer from the physically demanding work and the psychological distress of living far from family and friends. Samsung, one of the major semiconductor manufacturing companies in South Korea, was also at the center of controversy, disputing the connection between factory working conditions and their employees’ health problems—though the company officially apologized to the family of Hwang Yu-Mi 11 years after she died of leukemia at age 22.

There are similarities in the unethical operations of global corporations such as these that include the exploitation and casual disregard for human life. When challenged, these companies simply moved their factories to less regulated Southeast Asian locations, where similar problems continue to occur. As customers and consumers, we are not given access to the stories of those who produce the goods we use. The shiny and slick surfaces of these electronics sold in similarly shiny and slick stores are designed to make us forget the hands that made the parts and assembled our devices. What if the products for sale resembled the individual workers’ physical appearances? How would a worker feel to see the result of that labor for sale, detached from their own body? Through Lizardians, the power relationship between an individual and a corporation is given shape and the moral responsibilities of living in a world increasingly dominated by corporations comes into question.

As the narrative of Lizardians progresses, Caleb temporarily escapes his reality through the use of social media. Reflecting upon the ways in which we engage with artworks and each other through corporate controlled digital platforms such as Instagram, all art and experience is transformed into small, flat images. This psychological distance has the power to reframe even the most gruesome human limb sculptures as exotic yet digestible pixels intended for short attention spans. As the distance from the reality and context of an object grows, our understanding of both objects and reality becomes abstracted—distorted, simplified, and beautified—and over time our perceptions become so numb that we seek out new and more outrageous filters. Towards the end of the video, as one protagonist destroys the sculptures, the lens of social media is momentarily shattered along with its all powerful beautifying filter and for a brief moment, perception opens to reality.

Staff

Producer/Scenario/Storyboard/Editing LEE Youngjoo

Character LEE Youngjoo, Edgar ROMERO

BG Edgar ROMERO, Mike KWOK

Animation Edgar ROMERO, LEE Youngjoo, Bertrand FLANET, Lautaro Costa ROMERO

3D Modeler Volodymyr KHANDOGA, 

Costume Design JEON Hyeseon

LOGO Yo-e RYOU

Graphic LEE Jaejin

Model Ellen PRESS

Camera Edgar ROMERO, LEE Youngjoo, Bertrand FLANET

Effect JEONG Yeji 

Sound HWANG Myungsoo 

Music KANG Haejin

Voice SOYEMI, Brandon KEETON, Dina M.SELIMOVIC, Lindsey WILSON, Brianne BUISHAS, Dan CHEN, Ava WYANT, Madison CRAWFORD, Brandon ROBINSON, Kasey MCNULTY