[-empyre-] Thanks to Lev Manovich and Tom Lamarre
Thanks Tom and Lev, Tim and I appreciate your discussion this week and are thankful that you gave us a peek into your work. Many thanks to both of you and we hope that you will chime in throughout the next few weeks during our discussion. Best to you both. Renate and Tim Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] An overview of our discussion on Animation
Here is the entire line up of guests as well as an overview for anyone who might be joining our discussion late this month. You can access this past weeks discussion as well as months and years past by going to our archive at https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ At the left a list of the months appears. Then the posts can be organized by date, author, etc. Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray with invited discussants Thomas LaMarre (CA), Lev Manovich (UK), Suzanne Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK), Eric Patrick (US), Richard Wright (UK), Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), and Melanie Beisswenger (SG) Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context http://www.subtle.net/empyre Animated worlds are proliferating globally. In consideration of what seems like an explosion of online and museum exhibitions celebrating animation, we would like to spend the month considering the intersection between art, animation, and theory. While some of our guests theorize cinematic interventions in animation (timely given the success of Avatar) others create, curate, and ponder the experimental narratives and animated paintings that have captured the curiosity of the art world. What are the advantages of creating and thinking through animation? How do real worlds and virtual worlds overlap? What about the trend to feature animation in museum contexts, often at the expense of digitally interactive work which might be more expense to mount and opaque to witness? Can a critical distinction be made between blockbuster animation and boutique creations, often with more poignant narrative content? Earlier this fall, Tim marveled at the extent to which animation was featured in the Asia Art Biennial in Taiwan, with fascinating pieces by the Israeli filmmaker, Ari Folman and the Russian collective AES+F, as well as a separate show of Korean animation at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. That is now followed by the Animamix Biennial-Visual Attract and Attack now ongoing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taiwan. The cross platform solo exhibitions also have caught the eye of much of the museum public. Tim and Renate visited Sadie Benning's (USA) essay on queer sexuality in Pause Play at the Whitney Museum in New York and look forward to William Kentridge's (South Africa) Five Themes exhibition, a survey of almost thirty-years of work including many animated films, that opened last season at the MOMA San Francisco and will be at MOMA New York at the end of this month. Kentridge's work explores themes of colonialism and apartheid often through lyrical and comedic lenses that sometimes poke fun at the artist himself. His work merges the real world into animation and back again. Just this week Cornell hosted an extravaganza of The Quay Brothers film work with an exhibition of their set design. It was exciting to hear them talk about their work in several on campus forums. This month we invite our guests and subscribers to engage critically with the development of animation. We will be inviting artists and theorists to consider the concepts and context of contemporary global animation. This months February edition of empyre Theorizing Animation: Content and Context is moderated by Renate Ferro (US) www.renateferro.net artist-conceptual/new media, Department of Art, Cornell University, and Tim Murray (US), Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University. Week 1: Thomas Lamarre (CA) and Lev Manovich (UK) Thomas Lamarre is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and associate in Communications Studies at McGill University. He has written three books on the history of media and material culture in Japan. The first, Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, centres on the formation of inter-imperial media networks linking 9th century Japan to kingdoms in Korea and China, showing how calligraphic styles and poetic exchanges served to ground a cosmopolitical order. The second, Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Junichir#333; on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics, looks at how cinema in 1910s and 1920s Japan radically transformed urban experiences of space and time, resulting in a new image of world and world history wherein Japan was reconfigured as the Oriental subject and object of empire. The third, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, explores how animation technologies spurred the formation of distinctive lineages of technological thought in Japan of the 1980s and 1990s. With funding from SSHRC, he is currently finishing a book entitled Otaku Movement: Capitalism and Fan Media (under contract with MIT) that explores fan activities, transformations in labour, and cultural activism in contemporary Japan. He is a participant in a CFI grant to construct at Moving Image Research Laboratory. Thomas Lamarre (Department of East Asian Studies, McGill University) is a specialist in Japanese history, literature, cinema
[-empyre-] Welcome Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward
Tim and I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting the Quay Brothers here at Cornell a couple of weeks ago. It is at that time they recommended Suzanne Buchan as someone they considered to be an expert in Animation Research. We are delighted to welcome her. We are also happy to welcome Paul Ward whose name was sent to us by Simon Biggs. Paul's expertise in documentary, television and animation are sure to add a new dimension to our discussion thus far. Both Suzanne and Paul are new subscribers to empyre and we are hoping that all of our subscribers will welcome them with comments and responses to Theorizing Animation: Content and Context Suzanne and Paul will be making introductory posts soon! Thanks again. Renate Week 2: Suzanne Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK) Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for Creative Arts, England (www.ucreative.ac.uk/arc). She is the Editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com/). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on aesthetics and theory of the manipulated moving mage in animation, digital culture, and experimental film. Publications include Trickraum : Spacetricks (Christoph Merian Publishers, 2005) that accompanied the eponymous exhibition, Animated 'Worlds' (John Libbey, 2005), and The Quay Brothers: Into the Metaphysical Playroom will be published this year by University of Minnesota Press. Paul Ward is a Principal Lecturer in the School of Media at the Arts University College at Bournemouth, UK. He teaches on the BA (Hons) Animation Production course and contributes to a cross-disciplinary MA course. His research interests are in the fields of animation and documentary film and television. Published work includes articles for the journals animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Animation Journal, and the Historical Journal for Film, Radio and Television, as well as numerous anthology essays. Paul is also the author of Documentary: The Margins of Reality (Wallflower Press, 2005) and TV Genres: Animation (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming; co-authored with Nichola Dobson). He serves on the Editorial Boards of animation: an interdisciplinary journal and Animation Studies and is a member of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College with special interest in animation and documentary research proposals. Paul is the current President of the Society for Animation Studies. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward
My apologies to Suzanne Buchan who would like you to have this bio. We look forward to both Suzanne and Paul Ward's introductory posts. Sorry about that. Renate Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics and Director of the Animation Research Centre (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/arc) at the University for Creative Arts, England (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk), where she also has the role of College Research Professor. She is Editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com/). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on aesthetics and theory of the manipulated moving mage in animation, digital culture, and experimental film. She has a PhD from the University of Zurich and has been Guest Professor at Stuttgart University for Applied Sciences, University of British Columbia Film Department and most recently at 'Boundary Crossings' at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Founding member and Co-Director 1995-2003 of the Fantoche festival in Switzerland (www.fantoche.ch), she is active as a film, exhibition and conference curator including Pervasive Animation, Tate Modern 2007 (webarchive: http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/37995738001#media:/media/37995738001/24922396001context:/channel/most-popular). A founding member of Cinema and Media Studies special interest group Ex-FM, Buchan has published on a range of topics, including spatial politics, animation spectatorship, animation curatorship and James Joyce. Books include Trickraum : Spacetricks (Christoph Merian Publishers, 2005) (http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/Htmls/Verkauf/E_Publikationen.html) that accompanied the eponymous 2007 exhibition in Zurich, Animated 'Worlds' (John Libbey, 2005) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animated-Worlds-Suzanne-Buchan/dp/0861966619) , and The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom will be published this year by University of Minnesota Press. She is currently preparing an AFI Reader on animation theory. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] posted for Suzanne Buchan
Dear empyre, Last week's guests and participants developed a cohesive and impressive set of debates and discussions, along with a plethora of publications not normally associated with 'Animation Studies.' Renate invited me to participate this week with a focus on the Quay Brothers works, since their DORMITORIUM exhibition was recently on display at Cornell (after being in Rotterdam, Philadelphia, New York etc). I'm happy to do this, as my forthcoming book The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom will be published this fall by University of Minnesota Press, but also because Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (week 4) is also intimately familiar with their works (I cite her Artforum piece that is a rich and articulate exploration of their works). A way of forming a continuum with last week would be to explore what Tom Lamarre wrote Feb 4th: In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari present a model for thinking about continuity and process by way of three syntheses - connective, disjunctive, and conjunctive I found a potential for understanding the Quays' works via a notion of 'disjunctive synthesis' (and it was Tom who generously spread those pearls in front of me) via notions of vitalism that are grounded in Schopenhauer, Bergson and Heinrich Von Kleist. Discussing their poetics could also be a start, or if participants want to pose questions we could go from there. I do however have a few other themes I'd like to put on the virtual table. Because last week was centred on digital CGI image production, techno-aesthetics and reception, I'd suggest a shift to the stuff, the material, the artefact used to make pre-digital, or 'pure' animation, be it 2D, painted, drawn, puppet or object animation, particularly in independent work that operates outside the tired canons of animation scholarship. Tom mentioned an archive with 100,000 hours of anime; the ARC archive has an estimated 2 million artefacts production materials, sketches, drawings. etc. the profilmic materials used to make animation before the digital shift. These artifacts are increasingly rare since digital production began. Debates around the 'high/low divide between animation and art in the 'art economies' is part of this, as are installations (I'm thinking in particular of Gregory Barsamian's machines (http://www.gregorybarsamian.com), that I consider 'extracinematic animation. Another theme is one last week also touched upon (Tom used the term 'ubiquitous'), is a notion of 'pervasive animation' and its multiplatform manifestations. The current paradigm of animation studies resides in a hegemonic corpus of narrative and commercial cinema production. Last week's thread named a plethora of platforms and areas of visual culture production that are indicative of both a wide gap between production and consumption across platforms and its academic, critical counterparts. In terms of medium specificity, we could discuss the 'manipulated moving image' (a term I prefer to the rather 'fuzzy' and unsatisfying one of 'animation'), its relation to experimental film. I'm also happy to discuss A bit more information that might be helpful: PhD in Film Studies from the University of Zurich and Guest Professor at Stuttgart University for Applied Sciences, University of British Columbia Film Department and most recently at 'Boundary Crossings' at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Founding member and Co-Director 1995-2003 of the Fantoche festival in Switzerland (www.fantoche.ch), and active as a film, exhibition and conference curator including Pervasive Animation, Tate Modern 2007 (webarchive: http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/37995738001#media:/media/37995738001/24922396001context:/channel/most-popular). A founding member of Cinema and Media Studies special interest group Ex-FM, Buchan has published on a range of topics, including spatial politics, animation spectatorship, animation curatorship and James Joyce. Many of my ideas about interdisciplinary animation studies are in Editorials for animation: an interdisciplinary journal (accessible online) Prof Dr Suzanne Buchan Professor of Animation Aesthetics Head of the Animation Research Centre University for the Creative Arts, Farnham College Falkner Road Farnham, Surrey GU9 7DS, UK Tel:+44 (0)1252 892 806 www.ucreative.ac.uk : www.ucreative.ac.uk/arc P Help save paper - do you need to print this e-mail? Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal http://anm.sagepub.com Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the first cohesive international refereed publishing platform for animation that unites contributions from a wide range of research agendas and creative practice. Now online: The Pervasive Animation symposium, a collaboration between the Animation Research Centre and Tate Modern is now available online, featuring Norman Klein, Michael Snow, Vivian Sobchack, Tom Gunning, Anthony McCall, George Griffin, Suzanne Buchan, Beatriz Colomina, Edwin Carels, Siegfried Zielinski, Lisa Cartwright,
