Animation (MA)

more-than-human practices

Enseignants: Monsieur Pimpant , Alexander Schellow

What is – or better : what productively can be framed as animation ? Here the concept of animation is as well a driving force as it is itself very much in question.

Conceptually and methodologically we aim to reformulate a commonly rather technical understanding of animation (as a sub-genre of film, realised by a canonic, even though expanding body of defined techniques which can be „taught“ to the students) towards an expanded animation. ‚Expanded‘ means that animation is understood primarily as a field of transmedial artistic practices which can encompass means from drawing to writing to performance or video work, as well as cooking or urbanistic research. Therefore our students such as our collaborators in and outside the school have various backgrounds and work within various fields. In the process of sharing works within the department, ‚animation‘ serves as a counterpoint and field of operations/references in relation to which an approach can be (re)framed. The term does not fulfill a pre-existing definition, but formulates every time anew what animation can be.

The individual practices are critically reflected in close discussion with the teachers, but also in feedback-constellations with other students, that transgress the borders between bacchalor-, master- and phd-students, and namely between student- and teacher-position, towards an open form of collaboration. Complementary non-obligatory collective propositions construct a context of intensive exchange : from research-groups and –projects to particpation in occupations, from open screenings and regular collective work-dinners (‚colloqs’) hosted in different private appartments to works ‚on site’ as factual displacements (Tirana, Brussels, Marseille etc.) – we intend to stress the borders of an experiment „ school“ to a point, where animation rather than being considered a technic is explored as a way to (inter)act within a world.

[A selection of some traces of student works realized in the department can be discovered here : https://drive.google.com/file/d/13pnRhDXUYH2CtPLwVYmIP1AwzOqwGC7W/view?usp=sharing

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJT3JP3NAog&t=12799s