Tricky spaces: animation, installation and spatial politics
Buchan, Suzanne (2011) Tricky spaces: animation, installation and spatial politics. In: Tricky Women – Animationsfilmkunst von Frauen – Women in Animation. Schüren Verlag, Marburg. ISBN 978-3-89472-723-9
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Anthology of renowned women artists, media academics and experts who present a comprehensive picture of the status quo and the history of cartoon art: technical, personal, historic and up-to-date. The chapter considers how animation is pervasive in video games, advertising, music videos, and is increasingly featured in forms of hybrid and blended media. Not only does cinematic vision now extend beyond the movie theatre, but moving-image culture extends across a large landscape of technologies, media influences, and social relationships. The essay's trajectory begins with changing conceptions of animation as an art form, the phenomena of animation's historical exclusion from exhibition, the 'high/low' art divide. These ideas are briefly exemplified by a discussion of some recent exhibitions, to illuminate how relationships between moving image installation and audiences are mediated. While many of the artists in these and other exhibitions are men, there is a growing cohort of women working in animation installation. The essay focuses on the installation works of three women animation artists: Rose Bond, Tabiamo and Marina Zurkow, and reveals resonances and distinctions in their works in terms of animated spaces, worlds and domestic and gendered realms.
Review on Buchan's essay from Sharon Katz in AWN: 'Suzanne Buchan’s Tricky Spaces: Animation, Installation and Spatial Politics looks at current trends in the curating of animation as an art form. In addition to examining the field in general, she focuses on three successful women artists, Rose Bond, Marina Zurkow, and Tabaimo, whose animations are exhibited as installation art.
Until only recently, animation was considered by most people to be entertainment rather than visual art. As such museums and galleries tended to ignore it, and art schools rarely included it in their curriculums. This in spite of the fact that animation has been a multi-disciplinary arts practice for more than a century.
There is a paradigm shift under way and audience and curator reception is changing. My mandate for this column, for example, is to cover the intersection of art and animation. Several of my posts refer to the YouTube Play videos which were selected primarily for their artistic value by a committee of artists and filmmakers assembled and hosted by the Guggenheim Museum. Looking for creativity, innovation, and ground-breaking visuals, the committee chose many works created by artists and considered by them to be art.
But back to the essay at hand. Suzanne Buchan describes the limited forums (almost exclusively film festivals) in which most animation has been exhibited up until now, the exceptions being the work of George Griffin and William Kentridge which are routinely found in contemporary art venues.
She makes a fine distinction between “high” and “low” art and describes the politics at play when it comes to exhibiting and marketing them. And she asks the trenchant question, "at what point, and why, does an animator become considered as an artist, and who decides this?”'
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