This video arrived recently more or less unannounced from Thailand. It’s the work of a young artist named Pansak Sakpiboonrat out of Rayong, Thailand (about 60 miles southeast of Bangkok), and I think it’s smashingly good. “Socialist Circle” is the bastard offspring of Seymour Chwast, Edward Gorey, and the animators behind Yellow Submarine, but with a playful 21st-century frankness all its own.
Over the course of five curious tableaux vivant, we encounter ballerinas, cupids, porno directors, riot police, wild turkeys, etc. trapped, at the whim of God only knows what, in a bizarre perpetual motion machine. The title is a puzzle—is it a critique of the recurring cycles of enforced activity mandated by authoritarian regimes? And yet the ostensible themes (golfing and gluttony for instance, not to mention dollar signs) seem more capitalist in nature. I suppose “Capitalist Circle” would make for an inferior title, though. I’ll leave it for you to figure out.
Just click on it, it made my day and might have a similar effect on yours. I’m looking forward to see what insane videos Sakpiboonrat will come up with in the years to come. How long can it be before he’s got his own Adult Swim show?