2009 Conference Theme: The Persistence of Animation
The Society for Animation Studies (SAS) is an international organization dedicated to the study of animation history and theory. The Society is an international membershiporganization that supports and encourages animation scholarship throughvarious means, including its annual conferences. This year’s conference in Atlanta willinclude presentations, workshops, screenings and keynote address.
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"At Death's Insistence : Theorising Animation and Death" A Preconstituted Panel
Engaging the theme of this conference, “The Persistence of Animation,”the papers on this panel will explore and elaborate key theoreticalapproaches to animation in terms of death.
Death is a subject which has not only never had a panel dedicated toit at SAS conferences (as far as research reveals), it has not even hadmore than a few papers dedicated to it at them. Yet this subject, soforegrounded in and by not only cinema but Western culture as to formone of the two privileged foci of both, is likewise, it will beclaimed, privileged by animation.
Panelists: Dr. Alan Cholodenko, Chair of Panel; Dr. Freida Riggs; Dr. Michael Dow (abd); Dr. Janeann Dill.
(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part III: The Death of Death
Abstract:This paper will elaborate animation’s centrality to contemporaryculture, the paramount nature of animation’s relation to the uncanny inthat centrality, and the profound implications of that centrality forthe contemporary world and subject. To that end it will foreground theassertions of animation theorist Taihei Imamura in 1948 and philosopherSlavoj Zizek in 1991 of the relevance of the return of the dead forcontemporary culture, then turn to Jean Baudrillard for a larger visionof the (lifedead) matter.
Biographical Statement: The paper I propose is part 3 of the paper whose first part I presented at the 2007 Animated DialoguesConference in Melbourne and second part at the 2007 SAS conference atPortland. It extends my theorizing in those parts of the relation ofanimation to death, as well extends that theorizing in my Introductionsto The Illusion of Life and The Illusion of Life 2 andin a number of my articles. Dr. Cholodenko is an Honorary Associate atThe University of Sydney’s Department of Art History and Film Studies.
The Lifeworld of Wall-E: A New Generation
Abstract: Birth and death — crucial components of the social — are all turned upside down in Wall-E.An examination of this film through Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology,especially his characterisation of generativity and “lifeworld” withtheir focus on life and death — generation — will demonstrate clearlyhow the medium of animation is best suited to grasp the poignancy of acharacter locked in a dead world, the tenderness of the love betweenbinoculars on a box and an egg, the degradation of humanity when freewill is denied it and the optimism of the rebirth of our planet.
Biographical Statement: I took my PhD at theUniversity of Sydney in 2002. My thesis, entitled “The Community ofFilm,” investigated the analysis of live action film and animationthrough the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. My essay, “The InfiniteQuest: Husserl, Bakshi, the Rotoscope and the Ring,” is published in The Illusion of Life 2: More Essays on Animation,ed. Alan Cholodenko, 2007. The paper I propose for this conference isan extension of this work. Dr. Riggs is an independent scholar basedin Sydney.
It’s Raining Coyotes: Death and/in the Chase
Abstract:In surveying a number of American cartoons during the post-World War IIera, this paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which popularanimation engages in an aporetical uncertainty, focusing primarily onthe investiture of sapience into the cartoon character, the existentialconnotations of the chase, and the “death confrontation” signified bythe blackout gag. The motifs of acknowledgment and “deceleration” inthe cartoons of the era will be addressed: how does this phenomenologyof the personified form produce this effect? How is the acknowledgmentof a “life/death” state enacted, and what are its implications forpost-World War II culture?
Biographical Statement: Michael Vincent Dow iscurrently completing his dissertation, “The Death of the Chase: TheSocial Psychology of the Post-World War II American Animated Cartoon”at New York University. He teaches film and animation studies atNortheastern University in Boston. His paper is an extension of his dissertation, which focuses on American cartoons as reflection of the postwar social condition.
Insisting Persistence: An Eclipsed Birth Meets An Eclipsed Death
Abstract:Taking inspiration from George Bataille’s statement, “A dictionarybegins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks,”this paper is a questioning look at the early birth and seeming deathof critical histories for experimental film and experimental animation.Insisting upon the persistence of experimental animation as a uniquelydistinct aesthetic, this scholar distinguishes the art form whilesimultaneously reaching across the disciplines of art history, cinemahistory and philosophical inquiry. While this paper does not analyzeBataille per se, its author is inspired by the quote.
Biographical Statement: Founder-Director of the virtual Think Tank, Institute for Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence,Janeann Dill reaches across the creative disciplines to inhabit acritical landscape at a four-point intersect of experimental animation,cinema, fine art, and philosophy. Dr. Dill’s global research examinesexperimental animation as an inherently interdisciplinary andneo-aesthetic experimental fine arts practice per se. Imbuing a praxisin experimental animation with a praxis in painting and drawing, herscholarship and research largely takes its critical cues fromEisenstein, Eggeling, Krauss, Adams-Sitney, Moritz, Deleuze andHeidegger. In doing so, she tentatively joins thought to the unthought. Dr. Dill is also Visiting Faculty and Experimental Animation Artist,University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION ON PANEL AND CONFERENCE: http://blog.scad.edu/sasc/category/paper-topics/death-and-animation/
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