Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (June 5-6, 2015)
The aesthetics of animation has come to occupy a significantly expanded social and political role, moving well beyond the sphere of either children’s entertainment or avant-garde filmmaking. We now encounter digital animations, 3D simulations and computational models in contexts ranging from ecological activism, to human rights law, to military training regimes. As rhetorical tool, affective trigger and imaginative technique, the strategic use of the animated image has become a powerful means to both “re-animate” the past and speculatively predict or envision the future. Digital and analogue animations intervene in life processes at both the intimate level of the body and the expansive scale of urban design and planetary phenomena. In relation to living systems, animation may constitute an effort to capture or simulate that which already exists, or an attempt to bring into being that which could not exist otherwise. Given this apparent contemporary proliferation of animated life, this symposium will re-consider the place of animation and simulation within visual, material and political culture.
Confirmed Speakers:
Thomas Elsaesser
Eyal Weizman
Susan Schuppli
Toshiya Ueno
Pasi Väliaho
Liam Young
Sean Cubitt
Suzanne Buchan
Keisuke Kitano
Erika Balsom
Gillian Rose
Anselm Franke
Richard Squires
Screenings of Work by:
Harun Farocki
Hito Steyerl
Organised by: Esther Leslie and Joel McKim
The event is free, but booking is essential – book online now at Eventbrite
For further information, please contact:
Dr. Joel McKim
Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
Co-Director BA Media and Culture
Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
tel: 020 3073 8364
e-mail: j.mckim@bbk.ac.uk