Animate Assembly – 9/10 May and 10 June 2016

Animate Assembly

Animate Assembly 1:

9/10 May and 10 June 2016, Goldsmiths

Animation may be understood as a discrete set of experiential and technological possibilities, on the one hand, and a generalised politico-economic set of conditions on the other. Drawing on the crossovers and proliferations afforded by this doubling, the Animate Assembly network aims to debate the currency and significance of analogue and digital animation studies in view of the fundamental transformations occurring in cultural knowledge.

Through the first five sessions across Goldsmiths and Birkbeck the polemics and poetics of animation are explored by means of research screenings and collective work toward the first entries for a glossary of animation. WJT Mitchell will contribute a seminar and keynote on relevant themes in June.

Session 1: Histories (May 9), 6–9pm, Ian Gulland lecture theatre, Goldsmiths

Some simple questions: What is animation? What was it and what can it come to be? Does it possess one or more histories, and, conversely, does history have animation or animations? The question of history also contains all the other points of excavation that follow in the symposium: ghosts, technologies, infrastructure.

The event consists of commented film screenings

Session 2: Technologies (May 10), 10–11.30am, Studio a, Barriedale Buildings, Goldsmiths

Technologies, of whatever type, broker a link between individuals, collectives and outputs. These might be the technologies of cel animation, stop motion, pixel, print, 3D, or those of the camera, the computer, TV, cinema, book, the tablet, the touchscreen, glasses, colour. But in the encounter with animation, we point also to the technologies of eyes and bodies and ambiences and anything else that contributes to its mediation. What is the work of technologies in mediating animation, and what entanglements does it unleash? If animation is thought through its technologies, what becomes of it?

Session 3: Ghosts (May 10), 11.45–13.15, Studio a, Barriedale Buildings, Goldsmiths

Animation is full of ghosts. It is an exercise of the spirits, giving liveliness to the inanimate, sometimes historically recursive – sometimes projecting into a future, reanimating again and again its stock characters, its gags and tropes and never averse to mobilising magic against the law. Animated ghosts meet contemporary systems of production and projection to raise anew the question of what it means to be animate and be animated.

Session 4: Infrastructures (May 10), 14.15–15.45, Studio a, Barriedale Buildings, Goldsmiths

Infrastructures indicate the various matrices within which animation and animated practices take place: machinic production, labour codes, competencies, the economic-political, the Cloud, the cinema, ​arts and the academy. Is the infrastructure of animation itself animated in various ways – perhaps by ghosts, technologies, histories, or by other things?

Session 5: Interim Resume (May 10), 16.00–17.00, Studio a, Barriedale Buildings, Goldsmiths

Session 6: Image Science, seminar and public lecture by WJT Mitchell (June 10), details tbc  

Animate Assembly is propelled by Verina Gfader, Esther Leslie, Edgar Schmitz and Aylish Wood. The assembly is funded by CHASE and the Department of Art, Goldsmiths.

 

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