《原格破裂 – 動畫的互媒實驗綜覽》| 夏季 | 據點 Floating Project’s Elemental Dynamite: Research on Intermedia Practices in Animated Pictures | Summer Series | at HKAC & CMC
2019.08.23 （English）| ED01-01_e | for immediate release: Press Invitation | Chinese press release |
How big is the world of animation? How expansive and how stretchable? Animation breathes in its own measures. Yet it is also a microcosm of the grand system that defines our being. This is the kind of curiosity driving “Elemental Dynamite: Research on Intermedia Practices in Animated Picture” from the Floating Projects Collective, a mark to leave in today’s Hong Kong. The project’s first wave will roll in with two screening programs at the Hong Kong Arts Centre’s Louis Koo Cinema, and will carry on with more screenings, open conversations and performances.
Animation was a step-up from photography and drawing driven by the human desire to see things move. The birth of the moving image in the 1890s saw animation the first embodiment of such impulses. The story of animation parallels and cuts through many other stories — that of literature, tools and technological innovation, the arts and so on. The history of animation reveals facts of survival of humanity, and how artistic labour gets caught up in the economic-political web work of society. Animation is intrinsically close to children as it favours wild imagination and free expression. Yet more than cartoon pictures, animation must not be reduced to sheer juvenile entertainment or a pedagogic tool. Animation is a unique tale-teller of the fantastic, as well a privileged documentary form for what cannot be recorded by the camera. Animation “re-represent” the world with its own language and artistic resources — figuratively, but also in visualizing textures of reason, our world’s underlying rhythms and hidden energies, magnifying what is almost inaudible, invisible or imperceptible. And imagine animation pictures freed from the confines of the screen, freely flashing through space. Imagine ourselves walking through an animation. Animation is one and many things: how individuals fight for their dreams and survival and commit to craftsmanship, how artistic creation is underscored by resource allocation and ownership. Such is the big feast of Elemental Dynamite ready for visitors.
We are honoured to have invited Hangjun Lee, program director of the Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul (EXiS), to showcase a spectrum of analogue film-based moving image works with three screenings and one expanded cinema program. This includes 18 works selected from the late Japanese experimental animation master Nobuhiro Aihara (29 Aug: “The Third Eye: a Retrospective of Nobuhiro Aihara”), an aesthetically and historically revealing, careful selection from EXiS to shed light on experimental animation in contemporary Korean filmmaking (30 Aug: “Regional Experimentation 1: Photographic Survey”), a double-bill with a brief overview of European classics and contemporary experimentations on celluloids (30 Aug: “Regional Experimentation 2: Free Radicals”). Last but not least, three live expanded cinema performances will explore less usual viewing experiences in a projection environment (7 Sept: “Scoring Space: Non-normative Animated Images”). All this highlights the multiple trajectories of animation as artistic inter-media.
From Summer 2019 to Spring 2020, Elemental Dynamite will be hosting screenings and workshops at various venues, including the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre (City University of Hong Kong), Floating Projects (JCCAC) and the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, to connect with different audiences and stake-holders. We look forward to bonding with various communities and expanding our imagination on animation through active engagement.
The first wave of Elemental Dynamite will take place from 28 August (Thursday) to 7 September (Saturday), followed by the second wave with the “Contemporary Independent Chinese Animation” series as a focus in late October.
With the generous support from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Floating Projects is delighted to launch a year-long research-based project Elemental Dynamite: Research on Intermedia Practices in Animated Pictures. Gathering local and international artists, curators and scholars, the project investigates animation’s technical, intermedia and multidisciplinary practices via field studies and multiple open-door events to sustain dialogues, conversations, debates and collaboration in order to strengthen our trust in artistic creation in general.
For the latest updates and upcoming program, please visit: floatingprojectscollective.net/elemental-dynamite/
Media Enquiries
For more information or media enquiries, or schedule for interviews, please contact:
Yan Wai Yin (Winnie).
Winnie | yanwywinnie@gmail.com | +852 6353-0981
Program Details
▎8.27 7:30pm
The Third Eye: a Retrospective of Nobuhiro Aihara (an intimate journey with animation)
Hong Kong Arts Centre Louis Koo Cinema
followed by conversations with curator Lee Hangjun
▎8.30 7:30pm **double-bill
Regional Experimentation: “Photographic Survey” (survey of Korean independent animation) & “Free Radicals” (experimental animation classics)
Hong Kong Arts Centre Louis Koo Cinema
followed by conversations with curator Lee Hangjun
▎9.07 8:00pm
Scoring Space: Non-normative Animated Images
Multimedia Theatre, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, City University of Hong Kong
followed by conversations with curator Lee Hangjun
About “Elemental Dynamite: Research on Intermedia Practices in Animated Pictures”
Driven by the impulse to understand animation in the expansive landscape of socio-cultural histories and genealogies of technics, “Elemental Dynamite: Research on the Intermedia Practice in Animated Pictures” was conceived to address the many questions that often fall into the crevices between disciplines because they are surplus to the vision of a singular medium. This research-based screening/workshop series dig into the animated picture’s aesthetical paths and intermedia negotiations through work analyses, background and production studies, interviews with stakeholders, discussions and technical experiments.
