Paper short abstract

This paper explores the relationship between animation and animism through Harry Smith´s cut-out animation “Heaven and Earth Magic” and Bruce Bickford’s stop-motion sequences in Frank Zappa’s Baby Snakes.

Paper long abstract

There are two main principles that form the radical core of animation techniques during cinema’s short history. The first one is a non-identitarian starting point: anything can be transformed, through animation, into anything else, proposing a fluid universe. The second one is the technical belief that everything moves (or can de moved), in a sense, that everything is animated.

If animism is a “relational epistemology” (Bird-David, 1999), then animation, and the modern capability of explicitly animate what is thought of as inanimate through technical means should be explored.

In this paper, two “outsider” film-makers will be compared. Both of them made films without beginning or end, challenging the notion of a “work of art” as a product, engaging animation as a process that also challenged the highly organized film distribution system.

Bruce Bickford’s “Baby Snake” (1979) animations are a never-stopping flux of characters and situation that morph into each other, suspending any kind of identity principle in ways that are both terrifying and exhilarating, and offering a different understanding of both time and personhood.

Harry Smith’s “Earth and Sky Magic” (1957-62) was conceived as a magic procedure, and performed with accompanying chants and narration. Smith’s cutouts indulge in esoteric and transformative moments which were meant to produce a certain magical trance state on the viewers.