Horse Destroys The Universe by Cyriak Harris

So, I hear you ask, what the utter fuck? To be honest, I pledged to the crowd-funding of this book purely on the premise that a horse could destroy the universe, which essentially, and spoiler-free (it’s in the chuffing title after all) it does. After that, this entire review is based on the research I did this morning between sitting at my desk and actually starting the work I’m paid to do (around 60-80 minutes all told).

First off, Morgan Cyriak Harris is an animator who enjoys the surreal effects of the formal Western Art Tradition technique of mis en abyme, or in other words, the deliberate placing within an image of a copy of the same image and the subsequent implication of infinitely represented worlds – think two mirrors reflecting each other. In literary terms this could be the self-reflexive embedding of the story within the story, something of which I am inordinately fond. In Harris’s work this tends to be an animated grotesquery of self-spawned fauna fountaining from mouths and anuses.

Still with me?

Links to some of his most viewed animations are listed below, in no particular order other than the one with Alan Titchmarsh comes first, because Alan Titchmarsh. I’m also very fond of Chimpnology. I’m sure you’ll spot what I mean.


Such is his renown that he also animated the Goth2Boss segment in an episode of The IT Crowd, won an E4 E-Sting competition in 2009, and has created music videos for artists as diverse as Flying Lotus, Bonobo and Japanese Electronica group Denki Groove.

So far, so Wikipedia entry. In fact, you can probably learn more interesting things about him from his own website.

Back to the book and we find Buttercup in his stable and wandering around his field, minding his own business, slightly recalcitrant at the interruptions of two bickering scientists, who, unbeknownst to him, are experimenting on his mental capacities. Once he realises, with his exponentially expanding intelligence, Buttercup takes over the world from the safety of his field. That is until one of the scientists, shamed and terrified by the hubris of it all, attempts to explode him. Luckily, with his consciousness safely digitized, he survives as a virtual horse, but this prompts an existential crisis which, in turn, leads him to end the universe in an attempt to ensure his own continued existence.


Despite the contradiction there, it does sort-of make sense, although there is a lot of disbelief suspended like the Sword of Damocles over what might appear to be a flimsy plot device. It’s a lot of fun, and quite charmingly silly, in keeping with most of his animations, and against my better judgement (or rather, my in-hindsight-post-judice) I really think I enjoyed it. A lot. It certainly kept me amused while I was waiting for someone to find and unpack the wi-fi router.

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