Ecstatic Truth II: ‘Lessons of Darkness and Light’ 27th May 2017 Symposium at the Royal College of Art

The second Ecstatic Truth symposium was held at the Royal College of Art, London, on the 27th May 2017. This postgraduate research event was organised by Animation Research Co-ordinator Dr Tereza Stehlikova, working closely with the Animation MA programme leader, Dr Birgitta Hosea. It takes place a year after the launch of the RCA’s MA Documentary Animation pathway. The event was introduced by Professor Teal Triggs, Associate Dean of the School of Communication.

This article is composed of summaries of the speakers and their papers, taken from the symposium programme, illustrated by Alex Widdowson.

Keynote

Bella Honess Roe is is a film scholar who specialises in documentary and animation. Her 2013 monograph Animated Documentary is the first text to investigate the convergence of these two media forms and was the recipient of the Society for Animation Studies’ 2015 McLaren-Lambart award for best book. She also publishes on animation and documentary more broadly and is currently editing a book on Aardman Animations (I.B. Tauris), co-editing a volume on the voice in documentary (Bloomsbury) and co-editing the Animation Studies Handbook (Bloomsbury). She is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Film Studies at the University of Surrey.

 

Traversing the terrain of space, time and form

Rose Bond “Broadsided”

Must documentary be confined to a single screen?  How does the siting of a screening influence its perception?  This screening/talk focuses on documentary strategies in Rose Bond’s multi-screen animated installation Broadsided! which was sited in the windows of the Exeter Castle.  A screened excerpt from Broadsided! documentation provides the basis for brief examination of documentary methods used to convey a point of view: research, reenactment, data visualization and parataxis.

Rose Bond creates monumental, content driven animated installations. Rear projected in multiple windows, her themes are often drawn from the site – existing as monuments to the unremembered. Her installations have illuminated urban spaces in Zagreb, Toronto, Exeter UK, New York City, Utrecht, Netherlands and Portland, Oregon.

Carla MacKinnon “Immersion and alienation: animated virtual realities”

This presentation will explore how animated documentaries are pioneering creativity in virtual reality (VR). I will propose that animated documentary is a good fit for VR technically and creatively, and that the distancing quality and ‘absence and excess’ (Honess Roe, 2013) of animated documentary complements the dual sensation of immersion and alienation evoked in the dreamlike experience of VR.

Carla MacKinnon is a filmmaker and practice-based PhD candidate at Arts University Bournemouth, whose moving image work has been exhibited widely. Carla has a Masters in Animation from Royal College of Art and has worked as a festival producer and manager of technology projects. She is also director of interdisciplinary events organisation Rich Pickings.

 

Deeper strata

Vincenzo Maselli: “Deeper strata of meanings in stop-motion animation: the meta-diegetic performance of matter”

Can puppets’ skin materials express deeper levels of signification in stop-motion animation cinema? The paper suggests the concept of autonomous performance of matter in stop-motion animation and aim to demonstrate that matter can express a sense of tactility and metaphorically act autonomously from the diegetic narrative, staging a second level of narrative (meta-diegetic).

Vincenzo Maselli is a PhD student in design at Sapienza University of Rome. His research aims to demonstrate how materials and puppets’ building techniques can communicate narrative meanings in stop motion animation cinema. In October 2016 he moved in London, where he is continuing his research at Middlesex University.

Sally Pearce “Can I draw my own memory?” A visual essay

I try to use my pencil as a scalpel to extract a memory whole, but the memory will not be drawn out like a lump of tissue, instead it changes as soon as the pencil touches it. As my memory changes under the pencil, I am changed, I redraw myself.

Sally Pearce studied philosophy at Cambridge, then became a nurse. She started making films while studying Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam, followed by an MA in Animation Direction at the NFTS. Her films have screened and been awarded at Festivals around the world. She hopes to start her PhD in October 2017.

Barnaby Dicker “A Quivering Terminus: Walerian Borowczyk’s Games of Angels, animated documentary and the social fantastic.”

This paper explores how Borowczyk’s Games of Angels (1964) utilises a fantastic topography to play with tropes of documentary and fiction in an effort to engage with painful social history in a direct, but far from literal way; its design and structure conveying, through a disturbing momentum, the experience of a quivering terminus.

Dr Barnaby Dicker teaches at Cardiff School of Art and Design. His research revolves around conceptual and material innovations in and through graphic technologies and arts.

Panel discussion chaired by Birgitta Hosea

 

Keynote

Lei Lei

Lei Lei always pay particular attention to collecting and collating historical texts and images during his experiment animated works and try to search for elements of the poetic and dramatic between reality and fiction. In Hand colored No.2, through the use of manual painting, Lei Lei and Thomas Sauvin try to connect black and white images of different people, attempting to construct a fictional character, narrating his personal history.

LeiLei 雷磊 Artist / Filmmaker 1985 Born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, is an experimental animation artist with his hands on video arts, painting, installation, music and VJ performance also. In 2009 he got a master’s degree in animation from Tsinghua University. In 2010, his film < This is LOVE> was shown at Ottawa International Animation Festival and awarded The 2010 Best Narrative Short. In 2013 his film <Recycled> was selected by Annecy festival and was the Winner Grand Prix shorts – non-narrative at Holland International Animation Film Festival. In 2014 was on the Jury of Zagreb / Holland International Animation Film Festival and he was the winner of 2014 Asian cultural council grant.

 

Animation: Lessons of Darkness and Light

Guli Silberstein: ‘The Schizophrenic State Project’

The Schizophrenic State Project, which started in 2000, contains a series of videos that appropriate mass media footage of violence, war, and protest, in the context of Israel, Palestine and the region. The images are processed via digital means in diverse ways, creating poetic works that formulate news media critique.

Guli Silberstein is an Artist and video editor, based in London UK since 2010, born in Israel (1969). In 2000 he received his MA in Media Studies from The New School NYC, and since 2001, he creates work shown and winning awards in festivals and art venues in the UK and worldwide.

Becky James: “Expanding the Index in Animated Documentary”

Documentary animation examining mental state is a robust subgenre; often these works try to recreate an unusual psychological state to promote empathy and understanding. Using patient records and contemporaneous film strips, Betina Kuntzsch’s 2016 animation Spirit Away avoids speaking for, explaining, or diagnosing the female patients at the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic. Kuntzsch does not use the index to provide truth claim or to promote understanding, but instead the index acts as metaphor and distancing mechanism in this work about isolation.

Becky James explores the intersection of the individual and social through animation. She has exhibited in galleries throughout the US and at film festivals including SXSW, Jihlava Documentary Festival, Filmfest Oldenburg, and IFF Rotterdam. A native New Yorker, James graduated from Harvard and received her MFA from Bard. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design.

Susan Young: “Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma”

This presentation and short film screening examines my use of autoethnographic animation methodologies (which include myself as an experimental case study), in order to excavate and bear witness to the memories and lived experience of psychological trauma, and to challenge their related, often stigmatising and ‘othering’, psychiatric diagnoses.

Susan Young is an animation director who has worked principally in advertising, commissioned films and music promos. Her current RCA research is based on personal experience of psychological trauma, and includes a series of short experimental films that explore how animation might ameliorate trauma sympt oms. www.susanyounganimation.com

Concluding panel discussion, chaired by Barnaby Dicker

This event is supported by the Society of Animation Studies, an international organisation dedicated to the study of animation history and theory since 1987. For more information: https://www.animationstudies.org

For more information about studying MA Animation: Documentary: http://www.rca.ac.uk/schools/school-of-communication/animation/documentary-animation-pathway. 

Video documentation of this event will be archived on our Vimeo channel at: https://vimeo.com/channels/documentaryanimation.

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Ecstatic Truth 2016 and 2017

Ecstatic Truth 2016 panel discussion

With the next Ecstatic Truth symposium coming up on Saturday, this seems like a good time to revisit last year’s event and share the recordings of the jam-packed schedule of speakers, workshops and networking.

Video documentation of all the speakers who presented at the 2016 symposium, including keynotes from Paul Ward, Abigail Addison and Brigitta Iványi-Bitter, as well as  our own Carla MacKinnon, is available here on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/documentaryanimation

Our own post from the event can be found here: https://animateddocs.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/ecstatic-truth-symposium/

Judit Ferencz introducing the workshop

‘Animating the layers of history’ workshop with Judit Ferencz

‘Animating the layers of history’ workshop with Judit Ferencz

The 2016 symposium was held to launch the new MA Animation: Documentary Animation pathway: http://www.rca.ac.uk/schools/school-of-communication/animation/documentary-animation-pathway

Ecstatic Truth: Lessons of Darkness and Light is the second animated documentary symposium at the Royal College of Art, London, on Saturday 26th May 2017.  

Book your FREE tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ecstatic-truth-lessons-of-darkness-and-light-animated-documentary-symposium-tickets-33257461964

Ecstatic Truth symposium: ‘Defining the Essence of Animated Documentary’, 14th May 2016 at the Royal College of Art

Here’s the first of our posts reporting on the Ecstatic Truth symposium, which was held on a warm Saturday in May at the Royal College of Art, London. A postgraduate (PGR) research event organised by Animation Research Co-ordinator Dr Tereza Stehlikova, the day launched the RCA’s new Documentary pathway, on its long-running MA Animation course, now under the new head of Animation, Dr Birgitta Hosea

We start with a run-down of the speakers and their papers, from the symposium programme, illustrated by our own Alex Widdowson:

“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 has the freedom to represent, stylize, or reimagine the world, it lends itself well to this aspirational form of a documentary. The symposium explored the idea of “Ecstatic Truth” and reflecting, speculating and imagining how the animated form might elicitate the different facets of this poetic truth, through its unique language.

 

Keynote: Paul Ward

The ‘illocutionary force’ of animated documentary’

I examine how animated documentaries do what they do by linking to Austin’s ‘illocutionary force’ in his ‘performative’ model of language. The illocutionary force of a speech act is concerned with effect and intention: it points to what something means and what you mean by saying it (in the way that you do). Animated documentary’s power, poetry and potential weaknesses can therefore be understood by thinking about their illocutionary force.

Paul Ward is a Professor of Animation Studies at Arts University Bournemouth, where he is Course Leader for the MA Animation Production at AUB and supervises PhD students. He has published widely on animated documentary and other topics. He is a Board Member of the Society for Animation Studies and served as its President from 2010-2015.

 

Showing the Invisible

Roz Mortimer, PhD candidate, University of Westminster, UK

‘Traumatic histories and phenomenology as method’

My research is centred on a phenomenology of the invisible, by which I mean ghosts, atmospheres and emotions. In this talk I used my recent film This is History (after all) by Roz Mortimer to explore the challenges of making visible the invisible. In this film the image is digitally manipulated to visualise affect related to traumatic memory. The question is how can phenomenology reframe our relationship to traumatic histories?

Roz Mortimer is an artist-filmmaker and doctoral researcher at University of Westminster. Her experimental films cross the genres of documentary, fiction and animation and have been shown widely around the world since 1995. Taking documentary methods as a starting point, she incorporates fantasy into her work to create socially engaged films that question ideas around truth. Roz has an MA in Visual Sociology from Goldsmiths, and teaches universities in the UK and USA. www.wonder-dog.co.uk

 

Carla MacKinnon, PhD candidate, Arts University Bournemouth

An Approach to Authenticity: Using abstracted stop-motion to evoke physical and psychological experience in animated documentary

I am exploring the use of ‘tangible territory’ (Stehlikova, 2012) within the evocative mode of animated documentary (Honess Roe, 2013). In particular, how stop-motion may be used to evoke physical and psychological states that cannot be conventionally recorded, through the use of materials that encourage haptic visuality and filmmaking techniques that trigger a physical audience response connecting the viewer to the subject.

Carla MacKinnon is a PhD candidate at Arts University Bournemouth. She completed her Masters in Animation at the RCA in 2013 and has worked as a producer and festival programmer as well as director of award-winning live action and animated shorts. Her documentary installation Squeezed by Shadows is currently featured in the ‘States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness’ exhibition at London’s Wellcome Collection. www.mackinnonworks.com

 

 

Transcending Time

Ülo Pikkov, PhD candidate, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia

Presentation of short animation film Empty Space 

Empty Space invokes a past memory, an apartment that once existed, and a small girl dwelling and playing there. It presents a story forged in the dreams of the father hiding to avoid capture and imprisonment. Empty Space is a reconstruction of a vision on the backdrop of the anxieties of the 1950s in the Soviet Union.

Ülo Pikkov studied animation at Turku Arts Academy in Finland and since 1996 has directed several award-winning short animation films (“Tik-Tak”, “Body memory”, “The End”, “Dialogos”). In 2005 he graduated from the Institute of Law in University of Tartu, focusing on the media and author’s rights. At themoment he is a PhD student at Estonian Academy of Arts. Ülo is the author of “Animasophy, Theoretical Writings on the Animated Film” (2011). www.silmviburlane.ee

Inma Carpe, Animated Learning Lab, Denmark

‘The Dressmaker, remnants of a life. The re-creation of the Self and memories through animation’

Animation is a visual thinking and feeling media that helps us to express an internal reflection about our reality so called life, to make sense finding our peace of mind and heart; to re-construct our Self  (the alignment of our thinking, feeling and acting). It is an alternative language to communicate and understand other points of views, other many selves seeking for the same: the ecstatic truth, our story in motion pictures.

Inma Carpe: Born in the Mediterranean, I live and work abroad between my home base in Denmark and Los Angeles. An experienced freelance visual development artist and animation-lecturer, I specialize in short formats and pre-production, but also split my time as a production assistnat in film festivals. Currently I’m working and researching how animation and visual literacy improve Self-development and communication (emotions-beliefs) based on art production experiences connecting cognitive/affective neuroscience with film making/storytelling. www.carpeanimation.com

 

Leah Fusco, PhD candidate, Kingston University, UK

‘Northeye: past, present and anticipated narratives of a deserted medieval village’

This research explores the documentation of a DMV (deserted medieval village), previously an island but now a reclaimed landscape located on a saltmarsh in East Sussex, and addresses problems in recording fragile histories and stories in physically shifting landscapes. I’m interested in how drawn visual narrative through moving images can explore and capture alternative timeframes and readings of place.

Leah Fusco: After completing at BA (Hons) in Illustration at the University of the Creative Arts, I graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2010 with an MA in Communication Art and Design. I am currently working towards a practice based PhD at Kingston University, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The research explores lost histories in landscape, using the deserted medieval village or Northeye in East Sussex as a case study. www.leahfusco.co.uk

 

Art and Science

Keynote: Abigail Addison

Silent Signal – probing the universal truth of science  

With Silent Signal, Animate Projects has connected six artists working with animation and six biomedical scientists to produce experimental animations that elicit new ways of thinking about the human body.

The project’s producer, Abigail Addison, talked about how the artists engaged with their collaborating scientists’ data, tools and processes, and brought to life the science. She also explored how each artist challenged the universal truth of science in the work they have produced.

Abigail Addison co-directs Animate Projects, an arts agency that champions creative animation practice, and produces ambitious interdisciplinary projects, such as Silent Signal, with a range of UK-wide partners. As a freelance producer she works with individual artist and cultural organisation on developing, producing and exhibition experimental moving images projects. Abigail is a Trustee of film and photography charity Four Corners, and an Advisor to Underwire Festival. @AnimateProjects

 

Truth, Fiction and Poetry

Marc Bosward, PhD candidate, Arts University Bournemouth

‘Layers of Meaning, Layers of Truth: Fragmented Histories & Composited Video Collage’

The paper presented a body of practice-based research that interrogates the interface of live-action and animation, specifically, how found footage as an indexical element of lived experience functions within the aesthetic of a constructed ‘other’ world. In this framework, the construction of non-real spaces that synthesise animation and found footage are explored for their potential in describing alternate histories with reference to ontology and ideology.

Marc Bosward: I am a lecturer in Animation and Illustration at the University of Derby. My research interests include the convergence of digital and analogue practices in moving image, the interface of live action and animation, experimental animation, animation and history and memory and experimental non-fiction film. I am a first year PhD candidate under the supervision of Professor Paul Ward at Arts University Bournemouth. www.marcbosward.com

 

Alexandra D’Onofrio, PhD candidate, University of Manchester, UK

‘Reaching Horizons: exploring existential possibilities of migration and movement within the past – present – future through participatory animation’

Alexandra D’Onofrio, documentary film director and PhD candidate in AMP (Anthropology Media and Performance) at the University of Manchester. She graduated in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and then completed her MA in Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester in 2008. At present she is in her final year of her doctoral research where she has investigated the stories and part of the imaginative worlds of three Egyptian men, though different creative methods, combining applied theatre, storytelling, photography, animation and documentary film making. Vimeo

 

Pedro Serrazina, PhD candidate, University Lusófona de Lisboa, Portugal

‘Notes towards the use of a documentary approach in the teaching of animation’

Since its early days, animation film has always reflected its cultural context at the time of creation. Nevertheless, it is still widely perceived as kid’s entertainment. Reflecting on practical examples and teaching methodologies, this presentation argued for a practice of animation which, by adhering to documentary strategies, engages with real issues, leaving behind the traditional Disney/anime/fantasy/game-inspired references that frame most of the animation students’ intentions at the beginning of their path. Rather than a matter of technique, and regardless of the much debated issue of “realism”, this text suggests that a teaching framed by a documentary approach, bringing questions of identity and social perspective to the core of the practice, reinforces animation’s thoughtful and participative role in the contemporary moving image debate.

Pedro Serrazina is an animation director and senior lecturer at Univ. Lusófona de Lisboa currently undertaking a practice-based PhD on The Creation and Use of Animated space in Animation, with a grant from FCT, Portugal. Pedro combines work as a director (his last film was the award winning Eyes of the Lighthouse, 2010) with an academic career in Portugal and the UK. He has published academic articles, a book of short stories & illustrations, and is currently preparing his next film, with funding from the Institute of Portuguese Filmmaking. Vimeo

 

Keynote: Brigitta Iványi-Bitter

Animated documentaries from Hungary and Central Europe:

From the 70s’ cinema verité to contemporary art practices

Animated documentary films from Hungary and the neighbouring countries are reflecting the actual historical context of the era they were made.  The genre itself became prevalent in Central Europe during the 70s due to cinema verité in Western Europe and documentaries with a socially critical edge and had a comeback in the 2010s with predominantly female directors, who gave it a poetic twist. In both eras artists of the region experienced dictatorship or later a socially engaged, critical position, therefore animated documentaries usually serve as complex traces of the past as well as pieces of art. Artists-directors to be introduced: Béla Vajda, Kati Macskássy, György Kovásznai, Éva Magyarósi, Eszter Szabó, Zbigniew Czapla, Ewa Borisewicz, Malgorzata Bosek.

Brigitta Iványi-Bitter is a freelance researcher of Central European animation history, animation film producer, curator of contemporary art (including animation) exhibitions and author. Berigitta completed her PhD at the Doctoral School of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary in 2012. Her Research thesis was on Cold War era experimental animation films in Central-Eastern Europe, with special focus on the legacy of the Pannonia Film Studio (Hungary)  and György Kovásznai’s (animation film maker) Oeuvre. Brigitta is a Lecturer in the History of Animation and in Contemporary  Media Art and animation at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest. Vimeo

 

 

Ecstatic Truth and Human Condition in Animated Documentary

Final discussion introduced and chaired by Mark Collington.

Mark Collington is the author of Animation in Context (2016) and course leader up the MA & BA (Hons) Animation Courses at the CASS, London Metropolitan University. He completed his own animation studies at the Royal College of Art.  His MA films, and subsequent Arts Council England funded animation commission work, have been screened on television and at a number of international animation festivals. His personal work primarily explores relationships between architecture and animation.

 

Other Symposium content:

Workshop with Judit Ferenz, PhD candidate, Bartlett School of Architecture

‘Animating the layers of history’

The workshop explored the role of the narrator in creating history. It introduced attendants to a specific Hungarian conservation method (falkutatás) that uncovers the different historical layers within the walls of a building, as a means to narrate the history of that building. We translated falkutatás into animation using the multiplane animation desk in experimental ways and collectively produced a series of short animations which are be uploaded to a website created specifically for the workshop.

Judit Ferencz is an MPhil/PhD student at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In her architectural research by design she is developing a new methodology to talk about history in architectural heritage. She studied illustration and animation at Kingston University, and art history at ELTE University, Budapest. She has a freelance illustration practice and is teaching illustration at The Cass, London Metropolitan University and City Lit. www.juditferencz.co.uk

Zoetrope by Hugo Glover, PhD candidate, Innovation Design Engineering, RCA

My research focuses on placing the animator as the central axis of animation making. By basing my approach in the arena of ‘design thinking’ I am attempting to construct an understanding of how animators think, and how they access and utilize their embodied knowledge of the world to inform their creative decisions. Using the framework of second order cybernetics my work explores control of change between animated objects viewed through a zoetrope.

Hugo Glover is an MPhil/PhD Candidate in Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) at the Royal College of Art. His research focuses on the creative exploration of stereoscopic 3D space through the use of digital stereoscopes, which house experimental CGI animation. By creating a physical space, as well as a digital stereoscopic space, Hugo’s work explores the hinterland of these two realities. Vimeo

The Ecstatic Truth symposium was coordinated by Dr Tereza Stehlikova

Tereza Stehlíková is a London-based artist working primarily in the medium of moving image.  She is currently a research coordinator on the Animation programme at the Royal College of Art.  Stehlíková is a founder of Sensory Sites, an international collective based in London that generates collaborative exhibitions, installations and research projects that explore multi-sensory perception and bodily experience. Current projects include developing a collaboration with professor Charles Spence of Cross Modal Research Laboratory, Oxford, as well as a collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Senses (UCL), investigating how interactions between the senses can be utilised in the expressive vocabulary of cinema.

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More reporting to come soon – watch this space!