conference

Call for Papers – Ecstatic Truth V: The Age of the Absurd

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

George Grosz - The Voice of the People is the Voice of God from The Face of the Ruling Class

Ecstatic Truth V: The Age of the Absurd
27-28th April 2020 (in conjunction with Under_the_Radar, Vienna)

plus 29th  April – Under_the_Radar symposium, Vienna

Call for papers deadline: 16th February 2020

Ecstatic Truth is an annual symposium that explores issues arising from the interface between animation (in all its forms) and documentary (conceptualised very broadly as non-fiction), with a particular interest in the questions raised by experimental and practitioner perspectives. According to Werner Herzog, mere facts constitute an accountant’s reality, but it is the ecstatic truth (a poetic reality) that can capture more faithfully the nuances and depths of human experiences. Given that animation (or manipulated moving image in all of its expanded forms) has the freedom to represent, stylize or reimagine the world, it lends itself well to this aspirational form of documentary filmmaking.

For this, our 5th symposium, held in collaboration with the Under_the_Radar Festival, Vienna, our theme is the Absurd. George Monbiot has described our contemporary age of increasing social and economic inequality, mass extinction and impending climate breakdown as deliberate disaster capitalism in which the ultra-rich benefit as institutions, systems of taxation and democratic processes implode. Everywhere the killer clowns and kleptocrats are taking over, he argues, with ludicrous strongmen dominating nations that would once have laughed them off stage. Absurdity is what they seek in order to take advantage. Chaos becomes the profit multiplier for the disaster capitalism on which they thrive. Every rupture is used to seize more of the assets on which our lives depend.[1]

So how can we imaginatively and creatively respond to these killer clowns and the absurdity of a world being run to continuously make profit regardless of its sustainability? What is there to stand for if the world is perceived as meaningless and how to fight this complacency ? Can we use animation for activism, to re-animate our conscience?  How can we creatively challenge all this doom and gloom, and use our creative practice to navigate and challenge the absurd of our everyday lives? What is the role of humour, surrealism, the historic strategies of the Absurd and Central European Existentialism? Why does animation matter?

We invite speakers to respond to these ideas in order to reflect, speculate and imagine how the animated (or expanded manipulated image) form might elicit different facets of poetic truth through its unique language. We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations, speculations, poetic reflections, rigorous questioning, even fierce creative opposition from both academic and practitioner-led perspectives. Selected papers will be published in a themed issue of the International Journal of Film and Media Arts.

The proposal should include an abstract of not more than 500 words and a short biography of no more than 200 words. Please send it to: ecstatic.truth.symposium@gmail.com

Further details of the Under_the_Radar Festival 2020 will be released in January.

Call for papers deadline: 16th February 2020

Ecstatic Truth is organised by: Birgitta Hosea, Animation Research Centre, UCA Farnham, UK; Pedro Serrazina, Universidade Lusófona, Lisbon, Portugal; Tereza Stehlikova, CREAM, University of Westminster, UK

With thanks to Under_the_Radar: Barnaby Dicker, Martina Tritthart, Holger Lang

[Image: George Grosz, ‘The Voice of the People is the Voice of God from The Face of the Ruling Class’ (1920)]

[1] George Monbiot, ‘From Trump to Johnson, nationalists are the rise – backed by billionaire oligarchs’, The. Guardian, 26/07/19

CALL FOR PAPERS. Cartoon animation: Satire and Subversion

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

Monday 17th Feb 2020
Animation Research Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey

You are invited to submit proposals for conference presentations of 20 minutes.

Deadline: 16th December 2019
Notification of selection: 6th Jan 2020
Send proposals to: animationresearch@uca.ac.uk

Background

Fifty years ago (in 1969) Oscar winning animator, Bob Godfrey, established the Animation course at UCA, which was the first Higher Education animation course in the UK and his archive is held at UCA. As well as his work in teaching, Godfrey served as mentor and employer to many budding animators and is revered as an iconic figure in British animation. Although popularly known for his children’s TV series, such as Roobarb and Custard and The Do-It-Yourself Animation Show, Godfrey also created a number of more experimental and adult works that drew upon traditions of British satire, DADA and Situationism.

To mark the Golden Jubilee of animation at UCA, celebrate the irreverent and anarchic humour of Bob Godfrey and re-launch the Animation Research Centre at UCA, we are running a symposium in our new Film building at Farnham, that will be accompanied by an exhibition of items from Godfrey’s archive.

While the main focus of our symposium is on animation, we warmly invite interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from other disciplines such as film, performance, illustration, comics, philosophy, psychology, queer and gender studies, etc. Our Keynote speakers are Steve Bell, Guardian cartoonist and Dr Sharon Lockyer, Director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research, Brunel University.

For its themes, the symposium draws upon Bob Godfrey’s archive to call for papers that engage with the following questions:

Symposium Themes

Politics and propaganda from print to the pixel.
How have traditions of print cartooning from Hogarth and Punch influenced animation? 

Laughing in the face of adversity.
Is humour a form of survival strategy? What is funny for those who are historically the focus of caricature and the butt of jokes based on stereotypes? What is the comedy of the oppressed? What is satire for the subaltern? How are hegemonic discourses around colonialism, class, race, gender and regional identity resisted through laughter?

Dream Girls
Funny or pathetic? How do we deal with historic cartoon versions of male sexual fantasy? What do they say about masculinity? Are they due for a feminist re-evaluation?  Could they be read as a critique of patriarchy? Are humorous films about sexuality made by women different in any way?

It ain’t half hot, Mum
How do we discuss racial stereotyping and caricature in historical animation? What is the relationship between iconic cartoon characters and minstrelsy? Are there arguments for re-evaluating controversial works such as those made by the Fleischer brothers or Ralph Baksche?

What are we going to do now?
What were the influence of traumatic circumstances such as war and PTSD on animators during and after the two World Wars of the 20th Century?

Arty Farty
Is there a relationship between comic animation and post-war art movements such as DADA, situationist and theatre of the absurd?

Vader his dolly buns: subculture, sexuality and comic codes
How does insider knowledge of shared cultural conventions, such as camp, gender parody and ‘secret languages’ like Polari, slip undetected into mainstream animation? How has theatricality and performativity effected animation?

What’s up, Doc?
What is it that is just so funny about the cartoon character whose impossible, plasmatic body defies all the limits of the physical world and all social taboos about abjection?

—-

Organising committee:
This conference is organised by Birgitta Hosea, Emma Reyes, Jim Walker (Animation Research Centre)
Exhibition curated by Jim Walker
Supported by Felicity Croydon, UCA Archivist, and Lesley Adams, Programme Director for Animation, UCA.
Peer Review Committee: Birgitta Hosea, Chris Pallant, Caroline Ruddell, Jim Walker, Paul Ward.

Selected conference papers will be included in a proposal for an anthology, Cartoon Animation: Satire and Subversion, to Palgrave MacMillan.

CFP: Ecstatic Truth IV

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

Selected papers from this symposium  are published in the International Journal of Film and Media Arts, Feb 2020 issue:
https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma

[Image by Dryden Goodwin]

Ecstatic Truth IV. Truth of Matter: process and perception in expanded animation practice – CALL FOR PAPERS

Our 4th Ecstatic Truth symposium will be at the University of Westminster on Thurs 16th May, with Keynote speaker Dryden Goodwin.
We seek proposals for presentations that address the potential of animation, in its most expanded form, to make sense of our realities.
Selected papers will be eligible for publication in a dedicated issue of the peer reviewed International Journal of Film and Media Art.
DEADLINE: 29th MARCH
More information: https://bit.ly/2XyCiOh
Notes from Ecstatic Truth I-III: https://expandedanimation.net/tag/ecstatic-truth
—
Ecstatic Truth organising committee:
Dr. Tereza Stehlikova, University of Westminster
Dr Birgitta Hosea, Animation Research Centre, UCA
Dr. Pedro Serrazina, Universidade Lusófona

Call for papers: artists and spatial inequality

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

Symposium_Still_2

MOVING POPULATIONS, SCANT RESOURCES, CHANGING COMMUNITIES: with this one-day symposium we want to have some dialogue about artistic practice that engages with radical and mobile approaches to geography that could include gentrification, colonialism or environmentalism.

Here is the call for papers.

SPATIAL MUTUALITY SYMPOSIUM:
 ARTISTS and MIGRATION, MATERIALS and URBAN CHANGE

Date: Thursday 23rd May 2019
Location: University for the Creative Arts, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7DS
Times: 10:00 – 19:00

Call for papers: SPATIAL MUTUALITY SYMPOSIUM – ARTISTS and MIGRATION, MATERIALS and URBAN CHANGE
 
Date: Thursday 23rd May 2019
Location: University for the Creative Arts, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7DS
Times: 10:00 – 19:00
 

Spatial mobilities of people and materials are emerging as important political and cultural issues (of our time). These mobilities may be related to conflicts, urbanisation, material resource extraction and the pressure of economic inequalities of North and South (all of or in any combination of the above). The work of artists in researching and collecting narratives and accounts of migration, uncovering material processes, and charting urban change is crucial in making our world of spatial mutuality visible.

The late Doreen Massey contended that space is constructed by narrative and the unfolding of personal and community identity. She suggested work foregrounding spatiality and mobility offers new frameworks for understanding the social world and the financial and political forces that shape it. The narrative and analytical potentiality of mobility and our material environment have been particularly of interest to lens based practitioners and those working with socially engaged practice. More recent analyses have explored data and material constitution of spatiality. (cf Faizal & Weizmann 2017, Harvey 2012, Kurgan 2013, Paglen 2018) Artists have used all these approaches and more in their work.

This one day symposium at UCA seeks 20 minute contributions from artists responding to these broad themes of migration, materials and urban change in three panels, with an emphasis on exploring identity and spatiality. We are seeking those working in a diversity of socially engaged practices, contexts and broadly using lens and auditory based media forms. We encourage a diversity of practitioners and presentation forms.
 
The three panels of this symposium are:
 
MIGRATION – artists working with themes of dislocation and place; the dislocation of narratives; and participatory practice.
 
MATERIALS / RESOURCES – artists working with the movement and use of materials in the global economy; issues of resource exploitation; waste; toxicity; exploitation of labour; de/re-colonisation.
 
COMMUNITY CHANGE – artists working with gentrification; social and spatial segregation.
 
Keynote speakers:
 
Christine Molloy, Desperate Optimists
Professor Alison Blunt & Dr Olivia Sheringham, Queen Mary University of London
Call for papers:
 
This one-day symposium at UCA seeks 20-minute contributions from artists and filmmakers responding to the above broad panel themes. We encourage a diversity of practices and presentation forms.
 
If you would like to present at this symposium, please send abstracts of 250 words maximum for 20-minute presentations; a biography of 100 words maximum; and any technical requirements for the presentation to:
 
Stephen Connolly stephen.connolly@uca.ac.uk
David Rule drule2@uca.ac.uk
 
Deadline for abstract submission: 31st March 12:00 (UK time)
 
Presentations to be confirmed: 12th April

 

CFP: Experimental and Expanded Animation

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

Lilly  Husbands wrote up a review of this conference here with lots of information about what was discussed: https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/review-experimental-amp-expanded-animation

Call for papers: Experimental & Expanded Animation: Current Perspectives & New Directions

Proposals are invited for an interdisciplinary one-day conference with an evening reception, screening and exhibition.

At the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, UK.

Conference date: February 13th, 2019.

E&EAniCover

THEME

With their recent volume: Experimental and Expanded Animation: Current Perspectives & New Directions, Hamlyn and Smith aimed to reach further into understandings of what experimental animation is, and has been,  since Robert Russett and Cecile Starr defined it in 1976. This conference aims to further focus our project and to develop findings from the publication through more immediate methods of open dialogue and/or film practice. The prompts listed below have been condensed from themes emerging in the volume. However we welcome proposals that respond to these areas and also those that pursue other lines of enquiry. A range of disciplinary approaches is encouraged and the conference aims to include papers from practitioners, practitioner/scholars and scholars. As well as traditional 20 min papers we encourage alternative methods for sharing ideas and materials through, for example, performed presentations, artistic works, mini-workshops and lightning talks.

PROMPTS

Craft/ materiality

Transparency of process and use of materials has been central to experimental/ materialist film practice and theory. To what extent has the homogenization of media today prompted a rise in more recent craft theory? How do Marxist materialist theories relate to post-human and new materialist discourse and in which ways do these more recent methodologies impact upon our understandings of experimental expanded animation?

Feminism/women in experimental animation

It’s understood that the privacy of animation production conditions facilitates exploration into issues relating to feminism.  Female animators today are translating concerns, such as the domestic, sexuality and the body, into large scale, expanded and performed animation.  Does such work, installed in spaces beyond the gallery/cinema, and in which the female animator is visible on stage, impact upon expression of the female experience, or has this become less crucial to articulate, and how does feminist theory offer insights into this area?

Industry/ independent

Critically reworked commercial animation is occurring today within the purview of experimental film. Outwardly appearing as traditional cartoons, how does this material sit within a field that has tended to emphasise the auteur and has avoided the graphic, the narrative and the popular? 

Inter-disciplinary

Increasingly we see interdisciplinary approaches employed to analyse animation, including for example post-humanist scholarship; aesthetics; phenomenology; feminism and critical theory. To what extent do these methods cast light on animated texts, or do they detract from fundamental questions concerning form and the medium?

Medium/ context

Media including photography, dance, and performance for example have been central to animation since vaudeville, and then through the expanded cinema of the 60s.  How is experimental animation advanced through media ‘impurity’, and to what extent are theories such as inter-mediality, which suggests that individual qualities of distinct media are enhanced through their interlocking, of value?

Perception/reception

Animation that is articulated beyond the single screen could be said to emphasise a perceptual and phenomenological engagement. Flicker for example, is located in the physiology of the viewer, while animated installation demands a mobile spectator.  Both modes of spectatorship are contingent and situated in the present of their apprehension. How is animation in the expanded field continuing to elicit new modes of spectatorship? 

Representation/ technologies 

3D-CG and internet animation has the capacity to invent and manipulate the extant world in myriad ways.  How is CG being used in the context of experimental expanded animated film?

Utopia/ ecology

Gene Youngblood hailed expanded cinema as reflecting a utopian expansion of both consciousness and technology.  Today much experimental expanded animation, made through contracted means of found or old materials, can be regarded as a response to resources made scarce through either forced obsolescence, unsustainable practice and/or as a creative resistance to media acceleration. How does the trend toward a careful ecology of materials impact on experimental animation languages?

SUBMISSION

Please submit an abstract (up to 500 words), 3–5 bibliographical sources, 3-5 keywords as well as a short bio by 15th of November 2018 to:

vsmith9@ucreative.ac.uk

with the subject heading: ‘Experimental Animation Conference’. The selected abstracts for the conference will be announced by late November 2018.

Expanded Animation in Linz

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

Expanded Animation V:

Daydreams and Nightmares: Amalgams of Technology and Aesthetics in Animation

expandedanimation

A fascinating symposium on September 8th – 9th 2017 that looks at hybrid technologies and collapsing boundaries in digital animation will take place at the Central Linz in Austria as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.

Organised by Hagenberg Campus of the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, the Ars Electronica Festival and Central Linz.

For more details about the event and the speakers: http://www.expandedanimation.com.

 

 

Ecstatic Truth II: Lessons of Darkness and Light

ExpandedAnimationLeave a comment

“Fact creates norms, and truth illumination” Werner Herzog 

Date: Saturday 27th May, 2017
Location: Stevens building, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore

This second animated documentary symposium at the RCA will to continue with the examination of how animation can contribute to, challenge and push the boundaries of what documentary film can be.

Our keynote speakers are Annabelle Honess Roe, author of ‘Animated Documentary’ and filmmaker Lei Lei.

For more information and to book a FREE ticket: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecstatic-truth-lessons-of-darkness-and-light-animated-documentary-symposium-tickets-33257461964