animate!

There were 55 submissions for the new animate! residencies at London College of Communication, funded by a grant from Arts Council England.

Three artists, Sebastian Buerkner, Riccardo Iacono and Jane Cheadle, will each take up a residence of ten weeks in a dedicated studio space in the Animation Department at LCC’s Elephant & Castle campus.

The Department developed the residencies, in collaboration with animate!, for artists whose work challenges the boundaries of animation practice in a context where students and staff benefit from close engagement and exchange of ideas with professional artists, whilst the public gains a rare, in-depth insight into artistic practice from online ‘diaries’ published by the artists on this website.

Sebastian Buerkner
Sebastian was born in Berlin, and has an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art. He recently completed Purple Grey, an animate! tv commission. His work has been shown at many international festivals, and solo gallery shows include The Unnamable (LUX at Lounge Gallery), earlier this year.

His animate! residency at LCC starts in January 2007, during which he plans to explore techniques for eliciting “emotional stir-ups in a really short time”, testing the potential of the single-frame, without having to tell a linear narrative.

Riccardo Iacono
Riccardo studied at Glasgow School of Art and has an MSc in Electronic Imaging from Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee. He has shown work at international festivals and in gallery shows, and in 2003 he was represented in Tate Britain’s A Century of Artists’ Film in Britain.

Riccardo’s animate! residency at LCC starts in April 2007, pursuing the possibilities of what can be achieved with animation if you take away the celluloid. He plans to work with students and staff beyond the confines of the studio, to explore how the idea of ‘animation’ might be used to develop work through group improvised performance.

Jane Cheadle
Jane was born in Johannesburg, studied political philosophy at the University of Cape Town, and has an MA Communication Art & Design from the Royal College of Art, where she was awarded the prestigious Man Group Drawing Prize. She has exhibited in South Africa and Japan, and in 2006 worked as an animator creating visual material for U2’s world tour.

Jane’s animate! residency at LCC begins in October 2007. She will investigate the changing area of Elephant & Castle, working collaboratively with a team of staff and students in the streets and underpasses, animating the city, literally.

Thursday 9 November 2006 19:00

In the second of a unique monthly series, experimental animation project animate! presents features, shorts and documentaries that take life beyond live action into a delirious, unsettling, inspiring and stunningly imaginative realm, where the visual meets the visionary. Guest directors, on-stage discussions and live music events accompany the series.

animate! Rogue Talents double bill 2: Future City
Films that challenge and re-invent the experiences of life in the city.


The Light Surgeons 7.00pm
Pioneering VJ / filmmakers The Light Surgeons introduce a selection of their short film work inspired by urban spaces and landscape.
Gilligan’s Travels is a two part audio-visual documentary across America combining photography, documentary footage and motion graphics, narrated by a Venice Beach ‘philosopher’.

Gilligan’s Travels / Thumbnail Express © The Light Surgeons 2000

In Passing makes a personal journey across Manchester as seen through the eyes of a partially blind woman.
The Chimera Project takes British urban spaces into a visionary realm.

Plus a dazzling collection of city-based shorts from the catalogue of award-winning animate! commissions, Feeling my Way by Jonathan Hodgson, 13 by Simon Faithfull and Ferment by Tim Macmillan.

Plus Girl Seeming to Disappear (Zan Lyons, UK, 2005) 5 min
A film created by Electronica artiste Lyons out of his live A/V set, premiered at onedotzero 2006.


Sin City soundtracked live by Zan Lyons 18 9.00pm
(Frank Miller / Robert Rodriguez, US, 2005) 124 min
With Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Clive Owen, Benicio del Toro, Jessica Alba, Elijah Wood, Nick Stahl, Michael Masden.

Sin City © Buena Vista Home Entertainment Inc 2005

Critically acclaimed Electronica musician Zan Lyons creates a haunting new soundtrack to the groundbreaking live action / animated adaptation of the cult graphic novels by Frank Miller. Set in a radically imagined landscape which plays a crucial role in the film’s narrative, Sin City delivers a unique, darkly unsettling eruption of new ways of seeing from the very heart of the Hollywood machine.


Upcoming animate! Rogue Talents evenings at Riverside Studios include Future Worlds in December and Future Sex in January.

Riverside Studios
Crisp Road
Hammersmith
London W6 9RL
box office: (020) 8237 1111
nearest tube station: Hammersmith
admission: £6.50 / £5.50 (concessions) for each half or the whole of the animate! double bill

Thursday 9 November 2006 19:00 Riverside Studio website › Map ›

2 - 12 November 2006

The Numero Festival, now in its seventh year, is one of the most important festivals of the Portuguese capital. During ten intense days the event promotes multimedia arts (video, cinema & cutting edge technological arts) and numeric culture, where sound and images are inseparable.

This year animate! contributes two programmes from its catalogue of commissions:

Friday 3 November 16.30
animate!: Life Beyond Live-Action. Thirteen films from animate!’s first fifteen years of commissioning. In each work the artist breaks the rules and demonstrates that life is most exciting ‘beyond live-action’:
Miles from Anywhere (1997) by Gary Carpenter, 15th February (1995) by Tim Webb, SKZCP (1997) by Riccardo Iacono, Dad’s Dead (2002) by Chris Shepherd, Rotting Artist by Ann Course & Paul Clark, Rabbit (2005) by Run Wrake, Ferment (1999) by Tim Macmillan, What She Wants (1994) by Ruth Lingford, Feeling My Way (1997) by Jonathan Hodgson, Cowboys - That’s Nothin’ (1991) by Phil Mulloy, Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey (2004) by AL + AL, Sunset Strip (1996) by Kayla Parker and Love is All (1999) by Oliver Harrison.

Saturday 4 November 14.30
animate! tv 2006 Previews. A special programme of this year’s animate! tv commissions, plus a bonus hand-picked selection of animate! tv films from last year. Exciting new works take startling graphic journeys, reveal unsettling undercurrents and discover dazzling digital domains:
Careful (2005) by Damian Gascoigne, Flight (2005) by Dryden Goodwin, Who I Am and What I Want (2005) by David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd, From Nose to Mouth (2006) by Joji Koyama, Interstellar Stella (2006) by AL + AL, Proximity (2006) by Inger Lise Hansen, Purple Grey (2006) by Sebastian Buerkner, and We Believe in Happy Endings (2006) by Monika Forsberg & Susie Sparrow.

2 - 12 November 2006 Numero Projecta festival website ›

Wednesday 18 - Saturday 21 October 2006

animate! rates NIAF as the most important and unmissable event for the future of animation in the UK. Totally artist-orientated and hungrily in pursuit of the best in manipulated moving image work, both new in competition and from the archives, the festival also offers unique seminars plus lashings of music and live events.

The festival theme this year is Re-vision, and animate! is delighted to be contributing to a number of sessions:

Wednesday 18 October 12:45
animate! sponsors Manipulated, the second session during the day-long Offscreen Symposium 2006, with Ian White from the Whitechapel Gallery discussing with Steve Reinke from Canada some of the provocative themes raised in Reinke’s recent book The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema.

Wednesday 18 October 16:45
In Destroyed, the final session of the Offscreen Symposium, Gareth Evans, animate! Editor, talks with Bill Morrison about his feature film Decasia (2003) in which movement melts and collapses in front of our eyes until the illusion of cinema is not only exposed but literally destroyed.

Thursday 19 October 12:00
Two film programmes and an extended panel discussion designed specifically for the festival’s singular location. Tall Tales: From the Flat Lands and Tall Tales: From the Waterlands explore those wide open vistas where the horizon is the measure and the goal. Including works by Stan Brakhage, Andrew Kötting, Patrick Bokanowski, Emily Richardson and others, curated by Gareth Evans, animate! Editor.

Friday 20 October 12:00
Will I Dream, the second FDMX Uncanny Valley seminar, looks at the hyperreal from the point of view of digital artists who challenge total pin-sharp realism and euclidean geometry. Speakers include AL + AL, makers of animate! commission Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey (2004) and their just-completed second commission Interstellar Stella.

Friday 20 October 20:00
animate! tv 2006 Previews. The latest animate! tv commissions before they premiere on Channel 4 in the second half of November:
From Nose to Mouth by Joji Koyama, Interstellar Stella by AL + AL, Proximity by Inger Lise Hansen, Purple Grey by Sebastian Buerkner, We Believe in Happy Endings by Monika Forsberg & Susie Sparrow and Yours Truly by Osbert Parker.

Friday 20 October 22:00
animate! Re-visions: Life Beyond Live Action. Thirteen films from animate!’s first fifteen years of commissioning. In each work the artist breaks the rules and demonstrates that life is most exciting ‘beyond live-action’:
Miles from Anywhere (1997) by Gary Carpenter, 15th February (1995) by Tim Webb, SKZCP (1997) by Riccardo Iacono, Dad’s Dead (2002) by Chris Shepherd, Rotting Artist by Ann Course & Paul Clark, Rabbit (2005) by Run Wrake, Ferment (1999) by Tim Macmillan, What She Wants (1994) by Ruth Lingford, Feeling My Way (1997) by Jonathan Hodgson, Cowboys - That’s Nothin’ (1991) by Phil Mulloy, Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey (2004) by AL + AL, Sunset Strip (1996) by Kayla Parker and Love is All (1999) by Oliver Harrison.

Saturday 21 October 12:00
In Rabbit Dissected, Run Wrake unpicks his extraordinarily successful animate! commission Rabbit (2005) and discusses with Dick Arnall, animate! Producer, the challenges of forming a story and a film exclusively from found materials.

Wednesday 18 - Saturday 21 October 2006 Norwich International Animation Festival website ›

October - November 2006

A special programme of this year’s animate! tv commissions. animate! challenges artists to transcend the ordinary and re-vision the world with unexpected tools, to refresh their eyes and minds - and ours too. The project believes passionately in spirited, radical content, and in film-based work as well as digital process.

Six exciting, diverse new works take startling journeys, reveal unsettling undercurrents and discover dazzling personal domains. See them here before they premiere on Channel 4 in the second half of November.

From Nose to Mouth by Joji Koyama, Interstellar Stella by AL + AL, Proximity by Inger Lise Hansen, Purple Grey by Sebastian Buerkner, We Believe in Happy Endings by Monika Forsberg & Susie Sparrow and Yours Truly by Osbert Parker.

Norwich International Animation Festival Wed 18 - Sat 21 October
animate! tv 2006 Previews + drinks
Friday 20 October 20.00
Norwich Playhouse
42-58 St Georges Street
Norwich NR3 1AB
box office: (01603) 598 598

Flip Animation Festival Wolverhampton, Thu 26 - Sun 29 October
animate! tv 2006 Previews
Friday 27 October 11.30
Light House
The Chubb Buildings
Fryer Street
Wolverhampton WV1 1HT
box office: (01902) 716 055

FACT Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool
animate! tv 2006 Previews
Monday 13 November 18.30
The Box
FACT
88 Wood Street
Liverpool L1 4DQ
box office: (0151) 707 4450

Bradford Animation Festival Wed 15 - Sat 18 November
animate! tv 2006 Previews
Thursday 16 November 19.00
National Museum of Photography, Film & Television
Bradford
West Yorkshire BD1 1NQ
box office: 0870 701 0200

animate! is offering three new residencies during 2007 to established or emergent visual artists in the UK whose work challenges the boundaries of animation practice or which explores ideas of animation as manipulated moving image.

The residencies are based in the Animation Department at the London College of Communication, in association with the animate! project.

The residencies offer access to studio space and production facilities within a creative education environment; professional development and networking support; assistance to create new work; and potential exhibition through animate! screenings and online.

Each residency will run for 10 weeks, 3 days a week - starting January 2007, April 2007, October 2007 - within dedicated studio space at the Animation Department at LCC’s Elephant & Castle site in London.

Each artist will receive a fee of £3,300 and up to £1,000 towards production costs and expenses.

Application deadline Friday 3 November 2006

Downloadable guidelines here

Idris Khan joins the jury of the animate! Artist Award at Bristol’s Encounters Festival in November. This new award of £2,000 is offered for innovation in manipulated moving image.

One of the UK’s brightest emerging talents, Idris Khan creates multi-layered photographs, often of appropriated art and books. His work explores the history of photography and literature, memory and the beauty of repetition.

Idris Khan has two solo shows in London in September, of his photographic works at the Victoria Miro Gallery and of his debut film A Memory… after Bach’s Cello Suites at inIVA.

Thursday 5 October 2006 18:45

In the first of a unique monthly series, experimental animation project animate! presents features, shorts and documentaries that take life beyond live action into a delirious, unsettling, inspiring and stunningly imaginative realm, where the visual meets the visionary. Guest directors, onstage discussions and live music events accompany the series.

animate! Rogue Talents double bill 1: Future Self
Two films about consciousness and crisis set in very different worlds.

The Falconer 15 6.45pm
(Iain Sinclair/Christopher Petit, UK, 1998) 56m
With Kathy Acker, Steven Dilworth, Stewart Home
Sinclair and Petit’s rarely seen docudrama The Falconer is a dazzling, multi-layered pursuit of the life and myths of 1960s underground filmmaker, falconer and novelist Peter Whitehead (Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London). Dave McKean’s text, graphic and animation overlays add an extra level to this stunning seminal collage of consciousness in crisis and permanent revelation.

The Falconer (1998) by Iain Sinclair & Chris Petit

Chris Petit and Iain Sinclair are in onstage conversation immediately after The Falconer.

Chris Petit, one of Britain’s most distinctive and ambitious film-makers, shot to fame with his remarkable feature debut Radio On (1979). Recent collaborations include a series of visionary digital projects (The Falconer, Asylum, London Orbital) with writer Iain Sinclair. His latest film is Unrequited Love (2006).

Iain Sinclair is poet, filmmaker and one of Britain’s most respected authors. He is perhaps best known for his books of psychogeographic exploration such as Lights out for the Territory and London Orbital. He has edited a major anthology of writings on London, City of Disappearances, due in October 2006.

The Man Who Fell to Earth 18 8.40pm
(Nicolas Roeg, UK, 1976) 138m
With David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark
Roeg’s astonishing, elegiac, sci-fi parable about longing, loss and the constant search for love, whatever the cost, is one of the great visions of the fragility and beauty of life on earth, with David Bowie brilliantly cast as the alien who loses a planet but, briefly, finds a kind of human happiness. A cult masterpiece that transforms the everyday through luminous fractured narrative.

Upcoming animate! Rogue Talents evenings at Riverside Studios include: Future City in November, Future Worlds in December and Future Sex in January.

Riverside Studios
Crisp Road
Hammersmith
London W6 9RL
box office: (020) 8237 1111
nearest tube station: Hammersmith
admission: £6.50 / £5.50 (concessions) for each half or the whole of the animate! double bill

Thursday 5 October 2006 18:45 Riverside Studios website › Map ›

Friday 4 August 2006 21:00

Not an animate! event but an evening we definitely aren’t missing…

Run Wrake’s animate! commission Rabbit plays on a giant 50-foot open-air screen to an audience of 5,000 in the Serpentine Gallery/Time Out Park Nights series of events.

Collage of Rabbit and James Fox by Run Wrake

The other half of this double-bill is Performance (GB 1970, 105 min), Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s extraordinary depiction of 60s bohemian and gangland cultures in London. Starring James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg, the film is a stunning manipulation of reality, memory and fantasy - and an essential iconic document of British pop culture.

Outdoor screen
near Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
nearest tube: South Kensington
box office: 020 7402 6075 or 08700 600 100
admission: in advance £8 / £6 concessions, on the door £10 / £8 concessions

Friday 4 August 2006 21:00 Time Out website › map ›

Saturday 2 September 2006 19:30

In a suitably rural forest setting just outside of Exeter, animate! and Halloween join forces to present a spectacular multi-media event mixing film and live music at the brand-new Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World.

The Memory Band, featuring Stephen Cracknell plus special guests, present a live soundtrack to the 70s occult thriller classic The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, UK 1973, 85 min) and re-create the haunting mystical score originally written by Paul Giovanni including the infamous Willow’s Song.

This is followed by a selection of animate! commissions offering unexpected aspects of landscape and the countryside, with the recent multi-award-winning Rabbit using 1950’s educational stickers in a macabre and mystical short story matching the rustic horror of The Wicker Man, plus two works from local Devon filmmaker Kayla Parker including Sunset Strip, her hand-made collage of 365 West Country sunsets.

The full list of short films: Cage of Flame by Kayla Parker, Flight by Dryden Goodwin, Jumping Joan by Petra Freeman, Miles from Anywhere by Gary Carpenter, Rabbit by Run Wrake and Sunset Strip by Kayla Parker.

Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World
Haldon Forest Park
Exeter EX6 7XR
box office: 01392 832277
admission: £8.00 / £6.00 concessions

Saturday 2 September 2006 19:30 CCANW website › downloadable brochure & map ›