*CFP* "PERFORMING ANIMATION, ANIMATING PERFORMANCE", ONE-DAY INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM

Performing Animation, Animating Performance

King’s College London, Saturday 14th December 2019

A 1-day Interdisciplinary Symposium

From the early animators who appeared in whole or in part in their films (think of J. Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl, or Winsor McCay) to the more recent debates about the creative ownership of motion capture characters, performance is a spectre that is present in all forms of animation. ‘Acting’ and performance are often considered integral to the practice of animation, particularly the process of animating characters. In his 2013 book Shadow of a Mouse, Donald Crafton considers animated characters as performers. At the same time, notions of ‘animation’ and coming to life underpin conceptions of performance, coming to bear on how we might understand and theorise performance across multiple disciplines. This symposium aims to put ‘animation’ and ‘performance’ in a productive dialogue in a way that will enhance our understanding of animation and performance, both separately and together.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that engage with the topic of the symposium within any geographical and cultural context. We welcome scholars and practitioners from any disciplinary area.

Potential paper topics include, but are not limited to:

• Early animation and the presence of the performing animator 
• Motion and performance capture technologies 
• Animation as a form of acting 
• The use of performance methodologies in animation production and practice 
• Rotoscoping 
• Live performance reference 
• Animation and puppetry 
• Philosophical approaches to performance as animation/ animation as performance 
• Performance philosophy and animation 
• Ideas of performance in non-figurative and abstract animation 
• Animation, performance and geographical and cultural specificity 
• Issues of representation and diversity at the intersection of animation and performance 
• (Star) voice artists and vocal performance 
• The use of animation in live performance (e.g. theatre, dance) 
• The performance of live animation (e.g. sand animation) 
• Intermedial screen performances (e.g. live-action/animation hybrids) 
• Industrial elements of performance (storyboarding, software, etc)

Conference organisers: Christopher Holliday (KCL) & Bella Honess Roe (University of Surrey)

Conference registration fee TBC (but will be not more than £20)

Please send 300-word proposals, along with a short bibliography (max 5 entries) and bio (100 words) as one Word document to christopher.holliday@kcl.ac.uk and a.honessroe@surrey.ac.uk by 23rd September 2019.