Experimental Animation Edge of Frame & Animate Projects present Discussion Screenings at Whitechapel Gallery & Close-Up Film Centre 9 - 11 December 2016 1 2 Introduction The Edge of Frame Weekend is a celebration of the vibrant art of experimental animation, bringing together many varied and extraordinary films, from bold personal visions to intricate and visually stunning formal experiments, mixing contemporary works with classic and rarely screened masterpieces, from over 50 British and international artists, spanning the last 50 years. The weekend presents five curated screening independent animation, visual arts, histories programmes over three days, taking place and institutions. at Whitechapel Gallery and Close-Up Film I began Edge of Frame as a blog in Centre, and featuring a diverse range of 2013, to provide an online space devoted animation techniques including drawing, to experimental animation. As an artist collage, scratching on film and CGI to name and animator I was frustrated with the way just a few. Films from historical visionaries work in this area was often marginalised or like Robert Breer, Jeff Keen and Margaret Tait misunderstood. Through the blog and its show next to those of contemporary pioneers development into screening events earlier such as Peter Millard, Jodie Mack and Shen Jie. this year, I have tried to address this marginal The broad scope of the programme reveals status and to increase the visibility of artists connections and threads running through the working with animation. many forms of independent and experimental The Edge of Frame Weekend, taking animation, whilst celebrating the hybrid, place as part of London International boundary-crossing nature of the medium. Animation Festival, during a William Kentridge The first screening, Elemental Animation, exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, provides focuses on work by artists engaging physically an ideal focal point for varied, overlapping with the material of film itself. Journeys audiences, practitioners, organisations and into Experimental Animation is a day-long educators to come together and develop screening event featuring three programmes, our common understanding of this often including a guest-curated selection from overlooked area of practice. Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation. The Edge of Frame Weekend is curated Eyeworks co-director Alexander Stewart will by Edge of Frame and Animate Projects – be in attendance, and also introduces the final the UK’s foremost champions of innovative programme of the weekend, Push and Pull: animation practice. It is supported by Jerwood Films by Lilli Carré and Alexander Stewart, Charitable Foundation, Royal College of Art, a selection of the Eyeworks curators’ own and using public funding by the National moving image work. The Weekend begins with Lottery through Arts Council England. Edges: An Animation Seminar, led by Gary Edwin Rostron Thomas of Animate Projects, with speakers addressing questions of where experimental animation practice sits in relation to Left Jennifer Reeves, ‘Landfill 16’ 2 3 Vicky Smith: Performance Throughout history animators 14.00 - 17.00 have referenced the act Friday 9 December 2016 of animating in their films. Whitechapel Gallery Taking this reflexive tendency further, experimental animators enact the process of animated filmmaking to Experimental animation is a term we use because a live audience, expanding others won’t do. It differentiates a practice from our understanding of where popular animation forms, but as the range of work animation lies and positing presented in the Edge of Frame Weekend evidences, that the unusual movements as a category, it’s diverse, and unconstrained. of the animator are as significant as the films we make. Vicky Smith has been making and teaching experimental María Palacios Cruz: To a general audience, these animation since 1990. (UN)MOVING? techniques may facilitate beefbristol.org/staff/vicky- In the digital age, every image greater appreciation. smith is crafted; according to Lev Paul Taberham is a teacher, Barnaby Dicker: Flicker Edges: Manovich, cinema is now scholar, occasional filmmaker. Due to its openness towards just a category of animation. Paper tiger with radioactive frame-by-frame processes, an This presentation considers teeth. works that defy and reject experimental animation is conventional animation the privileged custodian Animation techniques as well as film of cinematographic flicker. and video technologies, Intense – almost sculptural – Seminar challenging the relationship Above and below Stefan Gruber, Kevin attention to frame intervals between animation and Glick & Leinors Allen, ‘Light Weight’ and the kinetic visual rhythms the moving image and their definitions. María Palacios Cruz is Deputy Director of LUX and co- The Edge of Frame seminar addresses these founder of The Visible Press, questions of definition and location, exploring where London. experimental animation practice sits – in relation to independent animation, visual arts, histories, Paul Taberham: Native The appreciation of visual institutions – at the ‘edges’. music does not always depend on a wholesale rejection of naturalistic perceptions. The use of synchronisation, Led by Gary Thomas, web-like geometric patterns Co-founder and Director at Animate Projects and symmetry all appeal to and Film Programme Manager, British Council. familiar, native capacities. 4 5 and patterns they can create within museum collections of software? What strategies exposes the ‘pulse’ of through reinterpretation and do they adopt to interpret cinematography, the limits re-appropriation. It gives software and software 20.00 of ‘animation’ and offers a alternatives to experiencing culture? Friday 9 December 2016 valuable opportunity to re- the object, in relation to Alan Warburton is an artist Close-Up Film Centre assess our relationship to the established museum curating. interested in the aesthetic heavy image flow of our multi- From the margins, it explores and political affordances of screen culture. the strange agency of an computer-generated imagery A programme of works which use the material of object, its histories and its Dr Barnaby Dicker is a (CGI) and the software used to film itself as a canvas. These visceral, vibrant films relation to the viewer. lecturer in Illustration at create it. alanwarburton.co.uk feature camera-less techniques such as scratching, Cardiff School of Art and is an art historian Claire Mead painting and printing onto the filmstrip, subjecting Design at Cardiff Metropolitan and recent graduate from Stuart Hilton: Wrongdoings University; his research the MA in Curating the Art Experimental animation film to decay and decomposition, and affixing revolves around conceptual Museum at the Courtauld is a fuzzy and faintly odd materials such as letraset or insects to its surface. and material innovations Institute, where she practice – ask anyone. It can in and through graphic researched ways of curating be infuriatingly opaque and technologies and arts. experimental animation within aggressively uncompromising. the art museum. It’s difficult to fund. Difficult Birgitta Hosea: clairemead.wordpress.com to watch. Difficult to explain. Beyond Noumenon So why bother? Because Edge Presenting the work of Katerina Athanasopoulou: working at the margins of Mi Chai, Tianran Duan Ecstatic what might be called meaning of and Tingting Lu, three Ecstasy (from the Ancient can produce just the right contemporary Chinese artists Greek ἔκστασις) can mean kind of wrong. Frame: pushing at the boundaries of to be moved outside oneself Stuart Hilton: director with animation who were featured and into another space and FAQ, animator, filmmaker, Elemental in Beyond Noumenon, time. CGI seduces the viewer musician, light removals. the recent exhibition of into entering a convincingly stuarthilton.com experimental and expanded familiar, yet completely made Animation animation at Sichuan Institute up world - whether new or Adam Pugh: Nothings of Fine Arts, Chongqing, reconstructed. Is there some Beyond representation, China. necessary agony in order to beyond material, never achieve that? Dr Birgitta Hosea is a London- becoming a thing or needing The remarkable visions created through these based media artist and Katerina Athanasopoulou to refer to things in order diverse approaches fill the frame with dynamic curator whose work explores is a London-based artist to exist: is it possible for textures and colour, and many will be presented presence, affect and digital filmmaker using digital an artwork to exist entirely materiality through post- animation to create work for hermetically; to fully inhabit on 16mm and 35mm prints. Seen in the cinema, animation and is Head of cinema and gallery space. only its own language? these works achieve a powerful effect, immersing Animation at the Royal College kineticat.co.uk Adam Pugh is a writer, us in strange and previously unseen worlds, and of Art. birgittahosea.co.uk curator and designer based in displaying the breadth and scope of abstract film. Alan Warburton: Experimental Norwich. adampugh.co.uk Claire Mead: Software Practice Curated by Edwin Rostron (Edge of Frame) Re-interpretation How do experimental Experimental animation animation, contemporary art provides subjective ways of and commercial animation giving new life to objects differ in their apprehension 6 7 Linear Dreams then I hand-painted the film which the image is the sound Richard Reeves to give it new life. —J.R. track, the sound track