311 East Broadway, at Grand Street Animism, the propensity to attribute consciousness to inanimate objects, once was supposed to be a defining trait of so-called primitive people. But modern ones project supernatural properties onto things like cars, communication devices and artworks; we are all in the grip of magical thinking, at least sometimes. "Animism," an unapologetically didactic show at e-flux, is a good prompt for a discussion of the implications. Organized by Anselm Franke, a curator in Brussels and Berlin, it consists of films and videos by a multigenerational roster that includes Chris Marker, Marcel Broodthaers and Ana Mendieta. A central work is "Assemblages" (2010), a 62-minute documentary by Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazzarato about the psychologist and philosopher Félix Guattari, who argued that taking animism seriously would solve many social problems. Other works exemplify animation. Walt Disney's "Skeleton Dance" is a comically macabre short cartoon from 1929. A film by Daria Martin studies two naked dancers interacting with robotic devices in a laboratory. One by Joachim Koester shows a man performing curious movements from a system of exercises that the probably fictional shaman Don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda. "Capitalism: Slavery" (2006), a short piece by the filmmaker Ken Jacobs, is a flickering, grainy, slow-motion pan of what looks like an old diorama of slaves picking cotton. Mr. Jacobs made it by digitally alternating exposures of both sides of an antique stereoscopic photograph. Strangely three-dimensional and eerily still, it casts an unsettling spell.