Through short animated videos, stories, and prose, Zumiens takes a humble look at our humanity. With a gaze that is both naïve and clear-eyed, it seeks to question our narratives. Too idealistic, Zumiens watches without understanding; we are so intelligent, yet we behave so foolishly. The Zumiens universe is like seeing ourselves through the eyes of an alien! It's a bit unsettling, but also very refreshing. At times, it grows exasperated at the spectacle of the human circus — with its juggling of lies and manipulations, its political acrobatics, its illusionists who distort reality and manipulate perception, and all its clowns who no longer make us laugh. At other times, it dreams of the beautiful and just world it believed in as a child; a world that does exist, often — but not always. And finally, it simply explores visual art.
‘The Zumiens’ began with my discovery of ‘Blender’ an open-source software for 3D animation. With a passion for drawing and painting, I was excited to explore this new media. In search of a purpose for this new hobby, I chose to write a short illustrated story. Free from any constraints, a very spontaneous story unfolded. Naturally, what emerged was the expression of what lingers in my mind: this contemplation of a world that revolves around invented stories, often with little connection with concrete reality. I am always troubled to hear expression such as “perception is reality”. Strong of a scientific training, where we investigate reality, such views are profoundly offending. Not that they don’t have any merits, they have limits too often ignored. This ignorance feels to me like a waste of energy but mostly the cause of so much suffering. These are only artificial stories! They cause wars, ecological disasters, and so much interpersonal suffering. But this is human nature. The book ‘Sapiens’ by Yuval Noah Harari describes this very well; it is exactly this ability to tell stories, true or not, that mobilizes humans to accomplish great things and great ills... Moreover, my readings and experimentations with neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) have convinced me of the power stories we tell ourselves have over our psychology and on our abilities or limits to achieve great things and to influence artificially oneself and others. Not the least, when we understand how powerful marketing techniques are, we realize how foolish our brain is!
‘The Zumiens’ has no pretension; it merely wishes to remind us that we are storytellers, and if we think of it a little, there are a few stories we might want to ignore; those that bring suffering around us. ‘The Zumiens’ is not blaming a social system, targeted organizations, or socio-demographic groups, it is blaming us, in our daily decisions, in the masks we choose to wear. It is just a gentle reminder that we have choices, these are only words, a reminder to look beyond words, because there is a concrete reality underlying our narratives, and the reality couldn’t care less about the words we invent.
