Animation and Performance, A Generative Language

In the first part of the twentieth century, animation was an art close to the artistic experimentalists and artistic researches. At that time, different artists also developed relationships between rituals and performance. And, in my opinion, when animation meets body, the transgression level submits the motion to a subversive flexibility and creativity. The performer is the movement and the animator the performer or the contrary. Animation and Performance is a research for my PhD in Expressivity of Space and Time in Moving Images that I’m finishing at the Valencia Polytechnic University in Spain. This research is essentially about the relationship between animation (as the art of the reinvention of movement, not the art of the mimesis of the existing movement) and performance (as the art that reinvents the movements, the space and the states of the human body). The goal of this presentation is to relate the relationship I found between Experimental and Generative Animation and the Generative Performance, based on my own research, my work as an artist with dance, performance and theater companies and my classes as a teacher of the Animation and Creative and Interdisciplinary Project at the Superior School for Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha – Portugal – ESAD.CR.

This program screened as part of HAFF 2009