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.