Inanimation

My practice borrows from early material processes of animation. The tools and techniques I primarily use were developed for commercial entertainment but are now obsolete outside of education and experimentation. The demanding labor process of producing cel animation independently applies technical constraints to my practice and forces a close examination of motion. I find my technique of tracing acute changes in images to be generative because the action of drawing and redrawing creates unexpected and unnatural movements. The motion created by unedited hand-drawn animation is slippery and constantly appears on the verge of transformation. My animations are short compiled loops of subjects which endlessly repeat small gestures and actions. Animating compact loops creates a perpetual anticipation of change while always rejecting progression. The movement produced in my loops refuses classification under the dichotomy of still and moving and instead calls for a more complex understanding of motion. My looping animations are primarily made for non-theater settings like galleries and web-based settings. In the current internet landscape, time-based media are regularly encountered in perpetual forms like gifs or endlessly scrolling websites. These new forms recall a history of cinema and early cinema devices where emerging technologies restricted media viewing to short repeating clips. Linear timelines as well as beginnings and ends in media have become unfamiliar with the new pervasiveness of looped forms. Working within a late-capitalist context where political power and resistance seem to operate in terms of perpetuity, my work examines a complex kind of movement where endless motion and stillness are simultaneously depicted. My practice involves animating scenes where constrained depictions of movement, change and progress are complicated by unusual treatments of space and time.