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/37995738001/24922396001&context:/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, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie: http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/37995738001#media:/media/37995738001/24922396001&context:/channel/most-popular Now a University! One of Europes leading arts and design institutions, the University for the Creative Arts builds on a proud tradition of creative arts education spanning 150 years. Our campuses at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester are home to more than 6,000 students from 76 countries studying on courses in fashion, graphics, design, media, fine art and architecture. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of the University . This message may contain confidential information and will be protected by copyright. If you receive it in error please notify us, delete it and do not make use of it, or copy it. Any reply may be read by the recipient to whom you send it and others within the University. Although we aim to use efficient virus checking procedures, the University accepts no liability for viruses and recipients should use their own virus checking procedures. 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
