Mutual Tunnels by Jun Cen

mutu­al tun­nels from Jun Cen on Vimeo.

Jun Cen and I both recent­ly grad­u­at­ed from the same pro­gram, MFA Illus­tra­tion Prac­tice.  Dur­ing the sec­ond year of this pro­gram, you pro­pose a year-long project (a the­sis). I had the plea­sure of watch­ing Jun devel­op Mutu­al Tun­nels, a short, hand-drawn ani­ma­tion. I was also wit­ness to the count­less draw­ings that he pro­duced for it!

Since our grad­u­a­tion in May, he has con­tin­ued to work and refine Mutu­al Tun­nels, adding to its mys­tique. Jun has writ­ten about the ani­ma­tion, stating:

The film seems to be exe­cut­ed in a lin­ear way. How­ev­er it is not until the end of the sto­ry that peo­ple real­ize they have come back to the begin­ning of the sto­ry, where the hands of the two pro­tag­o­nists are hold­ing one anoth­er. It forms a struc­ture sim­i­lar to a Mobius Strip. If our com­mon sense about the lin­ear char­ac­ter­is­tic of time is cor­rect, ques­tions are raised. What is actu­al and what is vir­tu­al in this film? Are all the frag­ments the crys­tals of time that reflect both past and present?