The Society for Animation Studies invites artists to submit images to serve as the logo for its 32nd annual conference. To be considered, the image needs to address the conference theme, “Animate Energies,” and include the following text:
Animate Energies
June 15-18, 2020
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Submission:
Please submit one or two images as attached files to SAS2020@tulane.edu
Selection:
Submissions will be anonymized and reviewed by members of the conference review committee. The selected artist will retain all rights to their work. The SAS and conference planning team ask permission to use the image for promotional purposes on the conference website and in printed materials such as posters and the conference program. The artist of the selected logo will receive complimentary conference registration, acknowledgment in conference materials, and modest travel assistance.
Please direct any questions to SAS2020@tulane.edu
Theme Description:
“Animate Energies” evokes animation’s dialectical definitions and practices—animating the inanimate, endowing with life, making objects move, and, in many cases, the tedious work or mechanical labor concealed behind expressions of freedom and possibility. It also evokes forces, powers, and resources that can be exploited, overlooked, or taken for granted, and that can generate resistance, activism, and new possibilities. Furthermore, to measure energy is to describe action and transformation within a system, whether that be an apple, rock pile, person, animation studio, or global media network. This mode of thinking about the energy of systems complicates anthropocentric and agent-centered ideas about the experience of animating or viewing animation.
The conference theme “Animate Energies” invites inquiry into the various human and nonhuman elements motivating and mediating production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. This includes efforts to understand the forces holding together distinct media assemblages—national and transnational studios, distribution infrastructure, aesthetic traditions, fan communities, transmedia narratives, and combinations thereof. It encourages participants to consider how animation enhances thinking about media not in terms of agents and objects but movements, flows, and energies.
This mode of inquiry includes comparing theories of animation to theories of mediation. Are claims that media constitute conditions and situations, extend and shape the human, create worlds, and structure being also the claims of animation? How might animation, in its many forms and definitions, draw attention to the energies of media or the activity, agency, and vitality of background conditions, structures, and environments, whether technological, economic, political, social, or ecological?
This theme is particularly germane to the conference site, New Orleans, which is home to energy and media industries and a broad range of cultural and artistic currents. The city has endured much and continues to face political and environmental challenges. Given that the city’s resilient and vibrant artist, activist, minority, indigenous, and migrant communities live increasingly at risk, we welcome proposals that support these groups and address issues pertinent to New Orleans and the Global South.
