Within a room crowded with aging televisions, the Grimsbys spend an evening pursuing their favorite interests: science, oddities, and the curious workings of living things.
A tall figure dressed in black stands beside a smaller, blue-haired companion whose painted smile remains fixed throughout their encounter. Around them, towers of televisions form the walls of a peculiar domestic sanctuary. Some screens carry static; others reveal black-and-white medical imagery, opening small windows onto the body’s otherwise concealed interiors. Branches and greenery thread through the surrounding space, placing organic life among the accumulated electronics.
The figures gesture, lean, and direct their attention toward the screens. Their movements suggest the familiarity of companions sharing something they enjoy, although the precise nature of their exchange remains elusive. Elongated fingers lend an uneasy delicacy to ordinary gestures. The blue-haired character’s persistent grin becomes difficult to interpret as its posture changes. Delight, fascination, and apprehension seem equally possible, leaving the viewer to search their bodies for emotional cues their faces cannot provide.
For the Grimsbys, these broadcasts belong comfortably within the home. Scientific imagery becomes part of the household’s visual landscape, as familiar as the furniture. Their interest in anatomy carries the pleasure of discovery: an invitation to look beneath a surface, examine a mechanism, or spend time with something peculiar. The room gives physical form to that appetite for looking. Everywhere the eye turns, another screen offers something to inspect.
The televisions also establish a series of nested encounters. We watch the Grimsbys as they watch images of bodies, our attention moving between the inhabitants of the room and the transmissions surrounding them. Their own unfamiliar forms become another subject of curiosity. The scene gently implicates us in their fascination: we, too, are studying strange figures, searching their movements for evidence of how they work and what they feel.
Karen Jerzyk made every character by hand and filmed the work herself, combining stop-motion animation with live-action performances by people in costume. These processes bring distinct physical qualities into the same world: the incremental movement of animated forms, the weight and gestures of a performer, and the tangible surfaces of handmade characters. Their meeting gives the Grimsbys an uncertain, compelling presence, suspended between constructed object and autonomous inhabitant.
Despite its unsettling details, the scene holds a sense of companionship. The Grimsbys appear to belong here, surrounded by their interests and accustomed to each other’s peculiarities. We enter as visitors to a household whose routines are already established. What first appears extraordinary gradually acquires the intimacy of daily life—a shared enthusiasm, an evening together, something interesting on television.
Part of *The Grimsbys*, a moving-image series by Karen Jerzyk exploring the domestic world of handmade characters with a fondness for science and oddities.
