Abstract

In the late 1930s, New York witnessed an extraordinary surge of animation. From spectacular animated billboards in Times Square to kinetic displays in Fifth Avenue shop windows to screenings of abstract animated films at the Guggenheim museum, animation was enlivening exhibition, advertising and art. This expansion of animation culminated at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, which hosted hundreds of mechanised exhibits and animated films to showcase the dynamism of industry and the Fair’s theme of the “World of Tomorrow”.

This illustrated talk examines how motion was used in these diverse sites, tracing the new ideas, aesthetic approaches and innovative techniques that circulated around animation in New York’s lively visual culture. More than just a passing fashion, new ways of creating and showing movement were seen as potentially transformative, filled with artistic, cultural and social potential.

Biography

Kristian Moen is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film and Television at the University of Bristol. He has published works, including Film and Fairy Tales (I. B. Tauris, 2013), which explore topics related to film history, film theory, fantasy, modernity and animation. He is currently Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project, “The Idea of Animation”. This project examines how changing notions of animated film as a medium and artistic form emerged during its first decades in the United States, England and France.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/school-of-arts/people/kristian-o-moen/index.html