to "smash yr fingers" is to create art with recklessness, honesty, and without any fear of doing something incorrectly. to "smash yr fingers" is to challenge and dismantle yr own self in order to build it back together again.

what i hope to encourage with my festivals is for video makers to challenge the status quo and seek out an alternative ideological framework for creating videos.

there is no "way" to make a video, however there are certain values innate to the medium that are often obfuscated by industry interests, film festival regulations, and social media algorithms. here are certain perspectives i hope artists consider when creating/submitting videos for SMASH YR. FINGERS...

with the advent of home computers, we have a functionally endless array of different tools and ways to create movies at our fingertips. we can write, record, archive, animate, capture memories, and stitch all of them together on the same machine. at that rate, why draw the line?

in order to pioneer the medium to a contemporary standard, we must utilize our tools to their fullest potential. we aren't "film"-makers. we aren't using "film". we're using computers to make video files. what can this mean for the art we create? what preconceptions do we have about making videos that are simply artifacts of bygone technical limitations waiting to be eliminated?

the sharing, viewing, and discovering of our art does not have to be at the mercy of billionaires. view counts are arbitrary numbers masquerading as the quantification of our art connecting with others. the algorithmic whirlwind is a false idol which pits our art, the baring of our heart and soul, up against whatever other random thing it decides to scoop up along the way. the internet starves the already starving artist and normalizes art as a free, consumption-ready piece of content. we mustn't surrender to this norm!

in an age where it's the gold standard for everything we create to be uploaded to the internet for anyone anywhere to click upon, i encourage videos made for SMASH YR FINGERS to only be shared locally & in-person. our art isn't a drop of "content" in the bottomless servers of Meta, Google, or X, it's our language.

the internet also shuffles our art and generations of artistic ideas into giant, endless reblog & aesthetic-post feeds. this can stagnate our ability to cultivate distinct artistic movements, sever art of any context, and stifle us in our pursuit to fully connect with the heart of the art we consume.

to abolish the internet is to encourage a unique echo chamber of ideas that can only happen in the here and now, much like the bay area experimental animation scene of the early 80's (Sally Cruikshank, Vince Collins, Jeff Hale) or the experimental animators that blossomed from 80's/90's Estonia (Priit Parn, Janno Poldma).

we live in Chicago, a city more alive with creative, forward-thinking video makers than anywhere else in the country. we must seize this moment and not let the internet pull us away from the immediate beauty of what surrounds us. the fires of our collective passion can burn this city to the ground!

film & animation are mediums historically gatekept behind class, whiteness, and patriarchy, and the marginalized people that did contribute to the craft's history were often cast aside and exploited.

the "rules" that "must be learned to be broken" in american art academia are often a product of discriminatory industry culture or racist western ideology. to reject the industry-centric ideology that has poisoned us to even our deepest of DIY cores is to also make room for artists of all backgrounds: people with no time from their two jobs, people with no money for equipment or art classes, neurodivergent and disabled folk with alternate perspectives, values, or abilities, etc.

the artistic voices of BIPOC, queer, disabled, neurodivergent, and discriminated people of all kinds bring about the most vital and culturally relevant pieces of art in history. uplifting and empowering art from discriminated people is paramount in maintaining an authentic scene, but it's also plainly the thing to do if you aren't a fucking asshole.

why did you make art as a child? what got you to pick up that crayon and wiggle it around on the piece of paper? as a child, how did you tell your stories? how did you use your hands to manifest your imaginary friends into tangible reality?

why do you create? what is exciting to you? what isn't exciting to you? how can you get rid of the shit that isn't exciting? how can you pour all your messiest, ugliest, human-est emotions into your own convoluted artistic language?

are you scared of what people might say? are you scared they won't understand your language? why should they? if you understand it, then somebody understands it. don't let them distort you, you're too beautiful for that.

art is the language of our soul, our confusing, unpredictable, unsolvable, irrational, mistake-ridden soul. in the confusion of this rigid world, this is our domain. it's freedom, it's magic, it's explosive, it's endless, it's home. nobody can take that away from you, not even yourself.