%0 Journal Article
%T ¡®Diagrams of Motion¡¯: Stop
%A Ewan Wilson
%J Animation
%@ 1746-8485
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1746847718782890
%X Jean-Luc Godard wrote that ¡®The cinema is not an art which films life; the cinema is something between art and life¡¯ (cited in Roud¡¯s, 2010, biography of Godard), an observation particularly true of stop-motion animation. The filmmakers discussed in this essay, Jan £¿vankmajer and the Brothers Quay, share a fascination with the latent content of found objects; they believe that forgotten toys, discarded tools and other such objects contain echoes of past experiences. Extrapolating £¿vankmajer¡¯s belief that memories are imparted to the objects we touch, the manipulation of his found objects as puppets in his films becomes a means of evoking and repurposing their latent content, just as the Quays develop their dreamlike films from the psychic content they perceive in their armatures. Making a case study of a selection of these animators¡¯ short films, this article examines the practice of stop-motion animation against that of kinetic sculpture, unpicking the complexities of the relationship between the inherently static mediums of sculpture and photography ¨C symbolic of a fixed moment in time ¨C and that of stop-motion animation, a temporal pocket in which these fossilized moments are revived once more
%K aesthetics
%K animation
%K Brothers Quay
%K kinetic sculpture
%K puppets
%K stop-motion
%K £¿vankmajer
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1746847718782890