"Some days she imagines that by her sheer will she can make body parts fall off of people who seem vicious to her. And some other days everyone around her looks beautiful. And when she was little, she wished that flowers would grow out of her footprints." - Gasmask

THE NATURAL DEATH OF A MOUSE is not only about saving mice or refusing bananas or making sacrifices against the hypocrisies of the daily life in the „spoiled and cultivated“ parts of the world. It is also about a person with red arms, who is entering the desert of her conscience to find out whether and how she can be a good human.

How and which sacrifices are necessary to be a good person are the central questions of this work. Big subjects indeed, but they do play a role in our daily life activities and decisions. Of course there are no clear answers to this. Most situations in life are ambiguous. It is often hard to know what is actually right and what is true. It always requires a deeper understanding of the matter and also it depends strongly on the perspective one has on it. But it always worth reflecting on those things, right? So here it is, a short and on the first glance superficial, colorful and noisy splashing out of spontaneous thought from a character that lives in the "spoiled, privileged and cultivated" part of our world. The protagonist is aware of the hypocrisies and the contradictions of herself and her surrounding. At times she feels the power of a wild animal, then she struggles with her inner child, but she also listens to the wise camel. In all of that she is trying to improve, she is fantasizing herself into possibilities of a better world, of which she knows that it is possible. She sees it with her own eyes when she visits this garden of peace and love. It doesn't seem like a ridiculous dream but she realizes that it can only exist if she is not there. This state of desire and the impotence of fulfilling it are creating a state of bipolarity of the mind which meanders between total numbness and ignorant bliss on the one side and frustration and emotional hysteria on the other. The mix of materials, the sharp changes of pacing and scenes, the bold colors and sounds in the animation are all a try to condense this state of being into a form that communicates to the knowledge and understanding from the senses and emotions rather than to the need for logical solutions as there are probably non for these questions.

Katharina Huber studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne until 2012. In 2014 she went to London with a DAAD scholarship for her Masters at the Royal College of Art. Since returning to Cologne she has been working as a freelance independent artist and filmmaker.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2020 - THE NATURAL DEATH OF A MOUSE, animation short
2014 - STONE AGE, installation video
2014 - NO SIGNAL, animation short
2012 - TANGRAM, animation short
2011 - THE KEEPER, animation short
2009 - IN HER ROOM, animation short