Tricky Women - Women in Animation

We are off on our holidays soon, and I'm taking Tricky Women - the book (Women in Animation).  It's really good. Waltraud Grausgruber & Birgitt Wagner have commissioned some properly serious essays (eight in English, four in German).  In the first place the book offers a fresh historical perspective of the history of women in animation from Jayne Pilling. Because we know she knows her stuff, she can write informally. She reminds us of the some of the chronological landmarks or milestones, but also offers thoughts on subject matter, viewing contexts, Eastern European animation and the necessity for contextual knowledge, or not.  For German speakers there is an essay about Mary Ellen Bute about whom there is not enough written or screened.   Ruth Lingford has written a wonderful essay about Vera Neubauer, it's short but incisive and together with the interview with Vera, gives an insight into Vera's powerful, joyful and brave work.  Eliška Decká has written about the The Czech and Slovak New Female Wave of Animation, which of course includes Michaela Pavlatova.  Julie Roy from the National Film Board of Canada has written about metamorphosis in Michèle Cournoyer's work.  

A still from Michele Cournoyer's film The Hat, 1999

Suzanne Buchan's essay is about Animation installation, focusing on Rose Bond, Marina Zurkow and Tabaimo.  The installed, projected works are described really beautifully, which is important for works that exist in a space far away and at a time that has passed.   At the end of the book, and if all that wasn't enough for 24 euros, there's an explosion of fantastic thoughts and connections from Esther Leslie.  Her essay Shadowy, Shape-shifting, Shaky Animation as Subversion sends you scurrying all over the place making mind altering connections, which I marvel at and embrace as a practitioner.  Leslie revisits some of the works from an exhibition Shudder at The Drawing Room in 2010, for which she wrote Shudder, Shutter, Shatter, but her written work here is all entirely new.

Did I say that it comes with a DVD too.  I can't think of another festival that has commissioned such an important collection of essays, can you?

Retiring

Not me, but my hard working Dad. We saw this rainbow with gold at the end of it after his party! It must be a good sign?

Reflecting Fashion

There's a large and comprehensive exhibition at Mumok in Vienna called Reflecting Fashion.  I didn't mean to go, I was in the building for the Pop Art show, but I was very glad that I did.  The central theme of the exhibition was the intersections between art and fashion, and they had gathered all the key artefacts from modernism onwards and presented them beautifully.  There's a lot of eye catching edgy stuff, including Valie Export's 'genital panic' action pants, outfits from Stephen Willat's Multiple Clothing Event (1993) and the elegant Elsa Schiaparelli & Dali Lobster Dress, worn by Wallis Simpson shortly before her marriage to Edward VIII.  I was most excited by the first floor, dedicated to Modernism. There was some beautiful textile designs by Sonia Delaunay and Austrian ceramicist Vally Wieselthier.  Giacomo Balla's 'modifiers', designed in 1914 were pretty splendid.  These were variable decorative elements that you can attach to your clothing as you wish, they were colourful graphic shapes created from felt and embroidery.  I've had a similar idea myself because young mothers often acquire splotches of this or that on their shoulder just before leaving the house, and if you could pop a colourful modifier on top, it would be very useful.

Sonia Delaunay's textile designs from 1920's

Cindy Sherman was well represented too, and she had made a paper cut animation on super eight in 1975 called 'Doll's Clothes'.  If you find yourself in Vienna, Mumok is definately worth a visit.

Animation Summer St. Pölten 2012

Thank you to Tricky Women. They do everything so carefully and well.  It was so nice to be in Austria again.  I can tell a bit of the story of the week in photos.

 "tiny frame - big projection!"
photograph by fh St. Pölten 

Ivoneta's lovely metamorphosis work
photograph by fh St. Pölten 

Many buffets

Concentrating

Really lovely work

Comfy bed

Refreshing lake for dipping into

Projection

The other workshop leaders were very cool and the participants were studious and all so interesting. I hope I can go back again soon.

Musical summer evenings

A sticky night in Cafe Oto to see Simon Payne's Iris Out from 2008, projected thrice and squiffy, so the iris's in question were all lined up.  It was very exuberant and a delighted woop was issued from the crowd when the projection finished.

We made an annual visit to the church of St Anne & Agnes for the first of three Music we'd like to hear evenings.

Talking of sticky weather, tomorrow I set off for Vienna, and I shall be happy to be back with my Tricky Women friends, new and old.

 I'm busy assembling a portable 16mm cameraless film workshop kit.  I hope if works and I make it to my European destination.  I think my hand luggage is going to be bulgy and fragile and my suitcase full of chemicals and sharp objects. However, it's a really nice task and I'm gathering knowledge and experience at a great rate.

There's also little trips to the plot and further afield to lovely Whitstable and I put these here to remind myself that it's not always been rainy this summer.

Tippoo's Tiger

I'm fascinated by this Figurine of Mr Hugh Munro being mauled by a Bengal Tiger (1792).  It can be found in the British Army Museum.  I don't think I've seen such a violent incident depicted in earthenware before.  Tippoo's Tiger in the V&A shows the same gory scene in life-size, and I plan to make a special visit soon.

Jeff Keen

Rayday Film, 1968 - 70 +1976, 16mm, 13 mins

I was very sorry to hear that Jeff Keen has died.  William Fowler has written a good obituary in The Guardian here.  Nearly this time last year I was involved in a panel discussion in which we chose  works that had influenced or inspired us, and I showed Cineblatz, White Lite and Marvo Movie (1967/8).  Both for the films themselves, which are political, humorous and exciting and also for his attitude and methods.  GAZWRX is a very good box set of his films, and his painting and graphic works have been showing here and there around the world.  I hope they will come here soon to spread the word about this wonderful artist.

Something Very Far Away

This lovely fellow is Johannes Kepler, who travels in his rocket ship So Far Away into the Universe that he finds it still Under Construction.  He is trying to look back at life on Earth, to a time before his sweet Tomasina perished in an accident with a performing horse at the circus.

Something Very Far Away was a 35 minute show for children, performed at the Unicorn Theatre. It featured the puppets of Matthew Robins, the creator of Fly Boy, and was written by Mark Arends.  It was similar to the work of Paper Cinema in that the mechanics of the work is privileged, and that's where the magic lay. Nearest the audience were four live cameras, lots of cables, the puppeteers, their puppets in a row, a mirror ball, a guitar, sparklers waiting to be lit and a holey bucketful of water.  It's performed on a small scale, but the theatre was also tiny so we could see clearly what's coming and how they were doing it.  The projection of the story, mixed from the cameras was almost secondary to the absorbing spectacle of the clever performers and their carefully timed tricks and changes.

Here I am!

My present preoccupation is this Muray 16mm film viewer and all things 16mm.  I'm really pleased to be off to Austria again, thanks to the Tricky Women Animation Summer in St Polten at the beginning of July.  I am leading a workshop in cameraless film, which is something I do a little bit at Anglia Ruskin. But there we have four Steinbecks, so I am working on a portable viewing solution (see above).  I'm really enjoying thinking about what films to look at over the three day workshop, and for inspiration, we will be studying the late Helen Hill's amazing compilation of 16mm 'recipes' gathered from practitioners around the world.

mmm

Morphathon

The Jump Cut filmmakers totally rose to the challenge of a two day metamorphosis crash course and made some beautiful, lively animation.  They will be editing the animation onto the live action that they shot earlier, then premiering the film in Cambridge in July.

Han Dynasty

I'm excited to be helping young filmmakers involved in Jump Cuts make the animated part of a film about a wonderful exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge.   The Search for Immortality is beautifully put together exhibition of tomb treasures from the Han dynasty.  The most spectacular object on display is the jade suit of armour, sewn together with gold thread.  Jade was thought to protect the body from decay and corrupting demons, I think the suit would also be worn in conjunction with 9 orifice plugs though, and this caught the young people's imagination.   There were many fascinating objects and it was very enlightening.  The group are going to make a documentary film with fictional elements with Ryd Cook and Rick Harvey, and I will join them over half term to animate.  The group were so extremely sparky, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

A second patch

We have been given a second allotment in West Ham. It looks like hard work in the photograph but we are four strong adults and we got the potatoes in just in time. The plot is the greatest complement to snipping and animating, although it's hard to get there at the moment because the Olympics is in the way. I'm not grumbling.  No I'm not.

Busy bees

In the last few weeks I've been very busy doing some green screen work, the analogue way, to make a new background for the beautiful KT Tunstall.  I've made a new house out of paper, and soon she can dance in there.

Darth Vada is getting a house too.

Easter

We've been very busy doing important things. 

Now we are back.  I have dealt with the funny smell in the studio and tidied up from our Pop up Picture Palace.  I'm going to be very merry working on a project for KT Tunstall, developing a new project with Emily Tracy and finishing the year's teaching at Anglia Ruskin.

Pop up Picture Palace

Here are a few lovely pictures taken by Amy Scaife on the night.

Popcorn!

Me, Ashley and Emily

Tony Tunes on his wind up grammaphone

Our lovely audience

Dick Turpin galloping through the audience

From Wood Street Train station

There was certainly a flurry of rendering yesterday before our Pop up Picture Palace was to take place at 7.30 in the evening.  The wall was just rendered by 3pm, the film by 3.05pm.  So Emily and I even had time to do hair and make up as Ashley's wonderful schedule suggested.  Yes, we dressed up and there was popcorn, golden chairs and Tony Tunes and his wind up gramaphone.  There will be many photos of the fantastic event, but tonight I will just post a before and after picture of the wall, we went back this evening to take a few pictures from the roundabout and give out the last of our programmes.

Our pop up picture palace poster

Ashley has made us a wonderful poster for our pop up picture palace.  Even though an event is counterintuitive to me as an animator, that poster makes me excited, but then I remind myself that there is a persistent amount of digging on the event pavement, the dentist wall that we will project upon is still patchy and we have got quite a lot of animation to do still.  Would Pro Plus be the professional answer?

David Hall - 1001 TV Sets (End Piece)

All these TV's, 1001 of them, are busy transmitting analogue signals from terrestrial channels, until the moment that the signal is switched off.  I wonder if David Hall knows when that will be? He is showing the work at University of Westminster's P3 Gallery until a few hours after that moment.  What an exciting artist he continues to be, and how fitting to have him signal the end of analogue telly with this amazing, huge, noisy, hot, live floorscape.  Go along if you can.