A curious chapter in the manual of animation: Stan VanDerBeek's animated spatial politics

Buchan, Suzanne (2010) A curious chapter in the manual of animation: Stan VanDerBeek's animated spatial politics. Animation: an interdisciplinary journal, 5 (2). p. 173. ISSN 1746-8477

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Creators:

Buchan, Suzanne

Description/Abstract:

This article aims to flesh out how Stan VanDerBeek created what Time magazine in 1964 rather glibly described as
‘a curious chapter in the manual of animation’. The main focus is on his pre-computer painted and puppet animation and collage animation works. After considering relevant terminologies, the author explores VanDerBeek’s own writings to see how and why his artistic and cultural philosophy could be expressed using animation techniques. After a discussion of a stop-motion puppet film and a painted film, she introduces, via Modernist contexts of collage and photomontage, some of VanDerBeek’s many collage and cutout animation films, proposing how his visual neologisms bear comparison with James Joyce’s portmanteau
technique. She then undertakes an aesthetic and sociopolitical analysis of his praxis within found footage genres and techniques, and suggests viewer strategies for watching his works. The article concludes by describing some of VanDerBeek’s manifold poetics and aesthetics as ‘a curious chapter’ within the continuum of political photomontage and independent animation production.

Item Type:

Article

Date:

July 2010

Identification Number:

10.1177/1746847710368325

Uncontrolled Keywords or tags :

animation, anticontinuity, collage animation, found footage, James Joyce, visual portmanteau

Depositing User:

Mary-Anne Spalding

Date Deposited:

17 Sep 2012 18:32