(preconstituted panel: At Death’s Insistence: Theorising Animation and Death)
Abstrac
t: Taking inspiration from George Bataille’s statement, ‘A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks’, this paper is a questioning look at the early birth and seeming death of critical histories in experimental animation. Insisting upon the persistence of experimental animation as a singular aesthetic, this scholar distinguishes the art form while simultaneously reaching across the disciplines of art history, cinema history and philosophical inquiry. While this paper does not engage in an analysis of Bataille, its author is inspired by the quote. Biographical statment: Founder-Director of a virtual Think Tank, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence, Janeann Dill reaches across the creative disciplines to inhabit a critical landscape at a four-point intersect of experimental animation, cinema, fine art, and philosophy (http://interdisciplinaryartinstitute.com). Dr. Dill’s global research examines experimental animation as an inherently interdisciplinary and neo-aesthetic experimental fine arts practice per se. Imbuing a praxis in experimental animation with a praxis in painting and drawing, her scholarship and research largely takes its critical cues from Eisenstein, Eggeling, Krauss, Moritz, Deleuze and Heidegger. In doing so, she tentatively joins thought to the unthought