Yū Tsukada | Sasha Svirsky, "Unidentifizierte Unflugobjekte (UUO)"
A review of Sasha Svirsky's 2026 animation "UUO," reading it through foreignness after exile and resistance to systems.Summary
This article reviews "Unidentifizierte Unflugobjekte (UUO)" (2026), a short animation by Russia-born, Berlin-based artist Sasha Svirsky, screening at the 13th New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival (November 20–24, 2026). The title is a coined term playing on the German for "unidentified flying object," meaning "unidentified non-flying object." Svirsky, who began animating as a self-taught artist after art school, is known for a playful, nonsensical style that fuses flat, constructive idioms drawn from Paul Klee, Dada, and the Russian avant-garde with 3DCG, animated by the wild energy of his drawn lines; the work has already screened at the Berlinale and elsewhere. The film pairs its imagery with the artist's introspective German-language narration, reflecting his move to Berlin after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and centering on his awareness of being a foreigner and the alienation of individuals caught up in institutions and work. In the first half, a box symbolizes institutional control through classification and preservation, with human bodies forced inside it. Midway, the tone is dislocated into a humorous discourse on "hair" as "the agent of chaos," whose uncontrollability becomes a resistance to systems, and each hair doubles as an animated line. The latter half intensifies a non-confrontational stance of escape: the author, wishing to be "useless," sets the human body in free motion and, echoing the motif of war from outside the work, heads toward a sweet utopia. The piece is dated as viewed on October 14, 2026, and cites Animation Obsessive, the Berlinale shorts blog, and Zippy Frames as references.
(Source：artscape)