The Borderline Behaviour exhibition approached animation as a state of mind rather than as a specific cinematic genre. Since its inception, animation has been a liberating process that enables the expression of ideas and fantasies. Guest curator Edwin Carels put together a kaleidoscopic exhibition in the context of the International Film Festival Rotterdam in which he examined the relationship between cinema and the visual arts.
The 'father' of animation – Emile Cohl – formed the historical starting point of the exhibition. Cohl used the seemingly simple and absurd iconography of the trick film to provide a sharp commentary on society and the art world in particular. With Borderline Behaviour, TENT focused on this anarchistic use of film and media technology. The exhibition drew a line from the ''automatic writing' from the surrealists to the contemporary visual and digital artists who propagate a special freedom of thought and action. Borderline Behaviour was set up as a meeting place for film projection, video beams, drawings, spatial installations, sculptures, murals and photography.
Art as Animation, statement by guest curator Edwin Carels
Animation film and art are often spoken of as, indeed, art 'and' animation, both a couple and yet not. But when was the last time anyone spoke of 'art and sculpture' or 'art and painting'? The notion of 'art and animation' suggests a certain hesitation, some uncertainty about the status of animation as a true art form. Can we even talk about animation in general terms? After all, it is far too rich and complex a field to be catalogued as a separate genre. And isn't it more of an art form than a genre? Just as film is not art by definition, neither is animation. For many, the underlying question about 'art and animation' is perhaps more one of: how can we define which animated film is art and which is not? This is a very complicated matter, it is a question of context, of certain (and indeterminate) criteria and, above all, of authoritative voices.
Could, for example, the Quay Brothers ever be nominated for a Turner Prize, and why did critics not understand the work 'Work No. 227: The lights going on and off', with which Martin Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001, as a form of 'expanded animation'? In the past, there have been artists who quite spontaneously found their way out of the animation ghetto and into the art world. And film is also being reinvented by young artists who are not so burdened by knowledge of what came before them, and the same is true of animation now: it is hip, as long as it is young and wild, not necessarily well animated.
Animation is the art of intervals. Its effect is entirely dependent on the eyes and the open mind of the viewer, the participation of each individual in the audience. It is therefore a matter of perception. Canadian animation pioneer Norman McClaren is most often quoted for his motto: 'animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between the frames is much more important than what is found in the image itself. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible intervals that lie between the frames.' That is what McLaren considered 'the philosophy behind the machine, the rostrum camera.' Animation, according to him, is the art of making the invisible visible to our minds, and is therefore quite different from blatantly referring to, for example, existing works of art and or certain forms of art.
McLaren wanted his thesis to be understood not just as something technical, but also in a figurative sense. An animated film sets a whole set of mental processes in motion, perhaps more than 24 frames of reference per second. More than live action, animation demonstrates exactly how film works, as well as how our minds work, how images and ideas are processed. Animation functions as a constellation of stimuli: visual, perceptual, cognitive, art historical, psychological, technological, emotional, physical, social, economic, racial, gendered, psychological, biographical, religious, gastronomic… to name but a few. For decades, film theory has shown how many factors are at play when we try to mentally grasp a film. It is only very recently that certain aspects of this theory have been applied to animated film.
Jean-Luc Godard famously said that cinema is the truth, 24 times a second. Paraphrasing McLaren, we could say: animation is the dark interval, 25 times a second. Many artists are difficult to situate in the border area between animation and feature film, animation and the visual arts, animation and graphic design, and the art world has become much more hospitable to something like 'multi-media' work. Perhaps it is better to simply no longer speak of animation as such. Look at how video art has largely disappeared as a concept, but at the same time how the technique is used more intensively than ever. Animation is above all the art of the in-between, the interval, the viewer, the mental movement, the stream of thoughts, the free association. It is the art of reading between the lines. It is not about the art on the image, but about the art that arises between the images. A constellation of impressions on our mind.
(Adapted and translated excerpt from the essay 'Animation = a multiplication of artforms?' by Edwin Carels, published in 'The Animate!' Book: Rethinking Animation. London: Lux, 2006)