Tako Tsubo. Animation. Work in progress, 10 min. In collaboration with Fanny Sorgo and Maria Trigo Teixeira.

The Tako Tsubo syndrome, also called broken heart syndrome, is a sudden temporary weakening of the muscular portion of the heart. The symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack and mostly appear after extraordinary emotional or physical stress.

The project Tako Tsubo is a stop-motion 10 minutes long animated Film, in which I approach the “feeling rules” of our society. The “feeling rules” are defined by US-American sociologist and academic Arlie Hochschild (The Managed Heart, 1983) as the rules about what feeling is or is not appropriate to a given social setting.

The film depicts through animated watercolor paintings an absurd, dystopian-exaggerated future, in which the socially acceptable treatment of pain is to remove the corresponding organ without replacement: smokers can simply remove their smoker’s lung and hopeless alcoholics remove their liver. The story focuses on the lead protagonist Ham, who wants to be released from his entangled feelings, and therefore, has a heart removal performed on himself. The narrative is divided into two levels of action: Ham’s outer and inner world. His outside world, the harsh reality, is his permanent abode: the hospital. His inner world is depicted as a forest. Only there Ham finds a space to sit on the edge of his own inner abyss, beeing confronted with himself.