Old things

Jan Svankmajer urges fellow film-makers … to “become a collector of old things. Listen to them. Never do violence to objects … tell _their_ stories.” His plea—his “Commandment”—holds true beyond modern animation in the cinema. With regard to magic lamps, flying carpets and the function of imagination and its creative powers today, the questions have changed. They no longer take up the dreamwork of the couch (“What scenes does make-believe stage?” or, “What stories does the unconscious relate?”). Instead, curiosity has changed direction and asks, “What do these things or objects—these toys and talismans—tell us not about ourselves, but about themselves?” When we listen to the things that talk, to the voice of the toy, they become eloquent as vehicles of futurity—time machines of innovation, not retrospection or preservation but agents of prophetic science; as Walter Benjamin noted, a thing looks back at us, and draws _us_ after its dream.

From Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights