International Journal of Film and Media Arts, Vol. 6, Nº. 3 : Special Issue (2021)

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    Hitting where it hurts : absurdity as an artistic method
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Jutz, Gabriele
    This article frames absurdity as an artistic method related to the context of an artwork’s making. The artworks introduced here are (very broadly) situated at the interface between animation and documentary. Their absurdity is not a matter of their content, but is deeply inscribed in the process of their making. Though they do not explicitly address political questions, they strike at the heart of given power systems or established hierarchies and thus hit where it hurts. “Make it absurd!” is a way of transgressing standards and norms and thus undermining established power relations. The article offers close-readings of a small number of contemporary artworks that can be apprehended as stimulating examples of how absurdity as a method deploys its critical potential. As the examples demonstrate, disrupting a given context can be achieved in many ways: By “inflating” formal devices in order to subvert typical elements of televisual language from inside-out (House by Andy Birtwistle, Great Britain 2013); by rendering a source text (and not just any text!) literally unreadable by investing an enormous amount of time to its dismantling (‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac by Jorge Lorenzo, Mexico 2013); by hijacking a male masterpiece and placing the “copy” as well as the female appropriator at the same level as the “master” (A Movie by Jen Proctor by Jen Proctor, USA 2010); by demonstrating that the technique of animation itself bears the mark of the absurd (Anna Vasof’s series of works, gathered under the headings of Non-stop Stop-motion and Muybridge’s Disobedient Horses, Austria, 2017–); and finally, via a method called “slapstick avant-garde,” by launching an attack on purist self-restraint (Dont Know What by Thomas Renoldner, Austria 2019). Keywords: Absurdity as an artistic method, appropriation, animation, slapstick.
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    The abstracted real : speculations on experimental animated documentary
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Hattler, Max
    This paper proposes a debate around the documentary character of experimental animation by looking at examples of my personal animation practice which probe the use of real-world source materials in the construction of audio-visual experiences across abstract and concrete. By employing the aesthetics of abstraction in particular ways, these ‘abstracted’ animation works underline ambivalence and ambiguity in creating open-ended narratives which aim to question, undermine, or transcend their everyday sources. Through a discussion of theoretical positions around notions of realism, materiality, embodiment, indexicality, actuality and process, what becomes apparent is an intrinsic relation between ‘reality’ and ‘animation,’ whereby the viewer actively participates in meaning-making processes in the reception of the work. The claim of the paper is to identify abstracted animation in its capacity to create ‘thinking spaces’ which instead of representing reality, establish what can be called the Abstracted Real. Keywords: experimental animated documentary, abstracted animation, real-world abstractions, animation as a thinking space, indexicality, meaning making, the abstracted real.
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    The same as it ever was ? A chance for creating new qualities in our exchanges
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Lang, Holger
    (...) Since then, the academic world has undergone some radical changes, and the process is not near its conclusion. Academia is a very close-knit environment, proud of its conditions and requirements, methods, and procedures. Still, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is providing unexpected possibilities to develop, question and reform central elements of it.
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    Shades of invisibility
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Pearce, Sally
    Shades of Invisibility is an ongoing experimental artist’s documentation of my practice in making Chernobyl Journey, an activist film that I have been working on for twelve years. In Chernobyl Journey live action tells the story of my four trips to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone between 2009 and 2015 in search of rare Przewalski Horses, while animation is used to subversively unravel this apparently straightforward and chronological story backwards, tracing my fascination for the Exclusion Zone back to memories of an acute and life-changing illness in my own timeline from May to August 1986. In the film, animation is used not only to portray my inner private world of sensations, emotions and memories, but also to trace the slow process of arriving at self-knowledge through unravelling invisibilities of a very external and political nature. However, it is not the animation itself that makes the film experimental and subversive, but the way in which the animation is intimately woven into the live action footage. Through methods of compositing and blending, a counter historical narrative is inscribed into the fabric and the forbidden spaces of the two landscapes my auto-ethnographic story inhabits. As well as providing an outlet for my counter historical auto-ethnographic story, Chernobyl Journey also debunks the myth that nature will spring back like a lightly trodden on blade of grass, even after the worst excesses of human exploitation, extraction and environmental disaster. Shades of Invisibility is informed and inspired by my reading of New Materialist texts, in particular Jane Bennett’s ‘Vibrant Matter’. In the text I attempt to explore the efficacy of agencies other than my own will upon my art, using invisibility as a linking theme to create a network of interlocking pathways into subject matter that is dense, multi-layered, interdisciplinary, complex and sometimes politically taboo. My approach to documentation is activist in itself, as it questions the hylomorphic and anthropocentric world view that underpins auteur theory. I argue that this model of creativity based on the unrestrained and unaccountable power of the human individual’s will mirrors the neo-liberal model of unrestrained extractive capitalism that is contributing so much to our present reality of climate crisis, loss of species diversity and global injustice. Keywords: Activist, Chernobyl, Invisibility, Vitalism, Animation.
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    Autoethnographic animation and the metabolism of trauma
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Young, Susan
    This paper provides an overview of my practice-based doctoral research: Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma, which uses a multimethod approach (cognitive focus, thematic analysis of qualitative data and artistic practice), to investigate autoethnographic animation’s capacity to moderate psychological trauma. Traumatic events such as child abuse, domestic violence and military conflict often present a major health challenge for survivors, with many experiencing significantly impaired function due to symptoms such as nightmares, emotional dysregulation, negative cognitions and dissociative states. The symptoms most commonly reported are intrusive memories-sensory-perceptual impressions that involuntarily intrude into consciousness, causing distress and a sense of reexperiencing the trauma. A number of cognitive studies have measured how these intrusions may be moderated through models that either interfere with imagery, simulate trauma, or change its narrative. My research uses interviews, thematic analysis and artistic practice to investigate whether animation may similarly moderate intrusions through processes that utilise the medium’s visuospatial capacities and its potential for rescripting, or changing, the trauma narrative. The desire to use personal experience as data motivated my interest in autoethnography as a methodology for qualitative inquiry. Autoethnography is a reflexive approach that explores autobiographical stories and connects these to wider socio-cultural-political issues through writing, performance and other media. In this research I am using autoethnography to both address my lived experience of trauma and to moderate its symptoms through my animation practice. Keywords: Psychological trauma, mental imagery, autoethnographic animation, artistic research, mixed methods
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    AYAH - Sign : collaborative digital art with the grenfell communities
    (2021) Gingrich, Oliver Mag; Choudhrey, Sara
    Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy, local artistic practitioners Oliver M. Gingrich, of media art platform ART IN FLUX, and artist researcher Sara Choudhrey, curated a series of workshops and events as part of the project AYAH – Sign. Significantly, the project places collaboration at all stages of its conception, implementation, and its outcome. Members of the local community and the wider general public were invited to explore new forms of artistic practice with a focus on Islamic pattern-making. These practice-based community-focused activities contributed towards a collaborative digital artwork, publicly displayed as a site-specific installation opposite the Grenfell Tower site. The participatory activity and artwork were designed to bring the community together in a time of need, to provide mutual support through joint creative engagement. Social connectedness, i.e. the experience of belonging, and relatedness between people (Van Bel et al 2009), is becoming an increasingly important concept in the discussion of social benefits of media including participatory art practices (Bennington et al. 2016). This paper reflects on the potential for art to bring communities together, to contribute to wellbeing and social-connectedness and providing a more inclusive experience for a range of community members. The project was conceived within the context of deeper research into participatory art and its potential to contribute to mental wellbeing, providing social cohesion for communities and acting as a creative support strategy in times of need. Collaborative art practices, such as AYAH - Sign, not only inspires further creativity among local residents through collaborative engagement, but also encourages community members to reconnect both physically and emotionally with one another. Keywords: Collaborative Community Practice, Digital Art, Islamic Digital Art, New Media Art, Social Connectedness, Arts and wellbeing,
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    Dance, long exposure and drawing : an absurd manifesto about the female body
    (2021) Akcay, Zeynep
    This paper summarises the evolution and production process of Kam, a long-exposure pixilation/ 2D animation film with a unique aesthetic approach that took three years to formulate and complete due to an iterative/fragmented production schedule. Kam, which means “shaman” in old Turkish, was conceived as a response to the rise of conservative and misogynist official discourse in Turkey, and it features a woman’s fierce dance. For this film, Turkish dancer Sevinc Baltali’s improvised performance was captured by the author using the technique of long-exposure photography. Condensing the motion of the dancer, the still frames created a flowing image on screen in which the dancer’s body is sometimes hardly perceivable. The dance flow was then recreated to the music of Amolvacy, an underground New York band featuring a modern interpretation of tribal music. Finally, the manifesto of the film was reinforced by adding another layer, this time of primitive drawings by the author, on top of the images, creating a more pronounced expression of the anger and the rebellious energy of the female body. This article argues that the unique aesthetics of the film attained at the end of an iterative and fragmented production process allowed a multi-layered liminal space for meaning to emerge. By elaborating on the relationship between the aesthetic approach, the political stance and the production methodology of this film, this article aims to demonstrate how animation can create an evocative and visceral experience that highlights and communicates what Herzog (2010) defines as “ecstatic truth”. Keywords: Female body, animated performance, pixilation, long exposure, dance
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    C: (Maintenance) animation is a drag : it takes all the f****** time*
    (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, 2021) Mc Hardy, Orla
    Animation and motherhood are parallel acts. There are striking overlaps between animation practices and the maternal time of maintenance and caregiving: repetitive acts and gestures, interruption, incremental and elongated time, the embodied experience of slow mundane practices, the durational drag of staying alongside something or someone. The pooled time of caregiving and maintenance, and the pooled time of animation production have a lot in common. In this paper, I want to pull apart some of the ways that an expanded animation practice-as-research shows how animation’s formal self-reflexiveness and media specific histories can start to reveal where value is placed (and not placed) on the time of their shared invisible labours. Possibilities emerge from thinking these invisible labours together, revealing the problematics of what constitutes a rightful subject or object of mothering, and what can be said to constitute animation. Keywords: Expanded Animation, Sculpture, Caregiving, Care, Maintenance, Feminism