ANIMAFEST SCANNER X | SYMPOSIUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ANIMATION STUDIES | PANEL 1 – WHAT DOES ‘ANIMATION’ MEAN NOW?

KEYNOTE: Animation Matters - Suzanne Buchan (Animafest Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies)

KEYNOTE
TEATAR &TD
06/06 TUE 09:30-10:25

This talk engages with some of the questions posed in the symposium topic 1 What Does ‘Animation’ Mean Now? and also raises others of a political, ethical or educational nature. This includes how animated works can address and solve problems and create benefits, taking into account current urgent realities and speculative future challenges facing the human and non-human world. This generates reflection on what motivates us to work in our field: what is our position, and why that matters now. The aims are to stimulate debate about how we articulate what we mean by ‘animation’ in our contemporary research, and why intention and agency in creative practices are important. The ambition is for us, singly and collectively, to find novel approaches for if and how we can meaningfully define animation for ourselves and, perhaps more importantly, for others.

Suzanne Buchan is Professor and head of MA Animation at the Royal College of Art London. Her research positions animation as central to contemporary debates in visual culture and the evolving relationships between media, creative industries and social change. She has published widely, most recently on animation and memory and on indigenous animation, is founder and editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal and has been a guest speaker and professor at universities around the world. She is also active as a curator, including Animated Wonderworlds (Museum for Design Zurich), and was a founding member and, for close to a decade, co-director of the Fantoche International Animation Film Festival, Baden.