The Persistence of Animation

(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix, Part III: Death and the Death of Death
(Preconstituted Panel: At Death’s Insistence: Theorising Animation and Death)

Abstract: This paper will elaborate animation’s centrality to contemporary culture, the paramount nature of animation’s relation to the uncanny in that centrality, and the profound implications of that centrality for the contemporary world and subject. To that end it will foreground the assertions of animation theorist Taihei Imamura in 1948 and philosopher Slavoj Zizek in 1991 of the relevance of the return of the dead for contemporary culture, then turn to Jean Baudrillard for a larger vision of the (lifedead) matter.

Biographical Statement: The paper I propose is part 3 of the paper whose first part I presented at the 2007 Animated Dialogues Conference in Melbourne and second part at the 2007 SAS conference at Portland. It extends my theorizing in those parts of the relation of animation to death, as well extends that theorizing in my Introductions to The Illusion of Life and The Illusion of Life 2 and in a number of my articles. (Dr. Cholodenko is an Honorary Associate at The University of Sydney’s Department of Art History and Film Studies.)

The Lifeworld of Wall-E: A New Generation
Preconstituted Panel: (Preconstituted Panel: At Death’s Insistence: Theorising Animation and Death)

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” with their focus on life and death — generation — will demonstrate clearly how the medium of animation is best suited to grasp the poignancy of a character locked in a dead world, the tenderness of the love between binoculars on a box and an egg, the degradation of humanity when free will is denied it and the optimism of the rebirth of our planet.

Biographical Statement: I took my PhD at the University of Sydney in 2002. My thesis, entitled “The Community of Film,” investigated the analysis of live action film and animation through the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. My essay, “The Infinite Quest: 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 is an extension of this work. (Dr. Riggs is an independent scholar based in Sydney.)

It’s Raining Coyotes: Death and/in the Chase
(Preconstituted Panel: At Death’s Insistence: Theorising Animation and Death)

Abstract: In surveying a number of American cartoons during the post-World War II era, this paper seeks to demonstrate the ways in which popular animation engages in an aporetical uncertainty, focusing primarily on the investiture of sapience into the cartoon character, the existential connotations of the chase, and the “death confrontation” signified by the blackout gag. The motifs of acknowledgment and “deceleration” in the cartoons of the era will be addressed: how does this phenomenology of the personified form produce this effect? How is the acknowledgment of a “life/death” state enacted, and what are its implications for post-World War II culture?

Biographical Statement: Michael Vincent Dow is currently completing his dissertation, “The Death of the Chase: The Social Psychology of the Post-World War II American Animated Cartoon” at New York University. He teaches film and animation studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

His paper is an extension of his dissertation, which focuses on American cartoons as reflection of the postwar social condition.

Bestowing Persistence: An Eclipsed Birth Meets An Eclipsed Death
(Preconstituted Panel: At Death’s Insistence: Theorising Animation and Death)

Abstract: Taking inspiration from George Bataille’s statement, “A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks,” this paper is a questioning look at the early birth and seeming death of critical histories for experimental film and experimental animation. Insisting upon the persistence of experimental animation as a uniquely distinct aesthetic, this scholar distinguishes the art form while simultaneously reaching across the disciplines of art history, cinema history and philosophical inquiry. While this paper does not analyze Bataille 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 a critical landscape at a four-point intersect of experimental animation, cinema, fine art, and philosophy. Dr. Dill’s global research examines experimental animation as an inherently interdisciplinary and neo-aesthetic experimental fine arts practice per se. Imbuing a praxis in experimental animation with a praxis in painting and drawing, her scholarship and research largely takes its critical cues from Eisenstein, Eggeling, Krauss, Adams-Sitney, Moritz, Deleuze and Heidegger. In doing so, she tentatively joins thought to the unthought. (Dr. Dill is also Visiting Faculty and Experimental Animation Artist, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.)

Preconstituted Panel
Engaging the theme of this conference, “The Persistence of Animation,” the papers on this panel will explore and elaborate key theoretical approaches to animation in terms of death.

Death is a subject which has not only never had a panel dedicated to it at SAS conferences (as far as research reveals), it has not even had more than a few papers dedicated to it at them. Yet this subject, so foregrounded in and by not only cinema but Western culture as to form one of the two privileged foci of both, is likewise, it will be claimed, privileged by animation.

Panelists: Alan Cholodenko (chair), Janeann Dill, Michael Dow and Freida Riggs. (See separate postings for details on each presentation)