"Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel" by Janeann Dill, phd, mfa A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. --- Georges Bataille It is most often the...
more"Visualizing Art History: Experimental Animation and Its Mentor, Jules Engel" by Janeann Dill, phd, mfa
A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks.
--- Georges Bataille
It is most often the case when I refer to my work as experimental animation that I am met with the question, what is experimental animation? I am instantly reminded of a story about Louis Armstrong in conversation with Johnny Carson who asked Armstrong, “What is jazz?” Louis Armstrong enthusiastically responded, “Well if you don’t know what it is, I sure as hell can’t tell you!”
In some ways, Louis Armstrong’s response might be said to be universal for questions having to do with art, in that any attempt to offer definition tends to further confuse, bind, constrict and/or be irrelevant, rather than to clarify meaning. As a scholar and as an artist, I am most interested in the unanswerable. As I understand it, to ask the unanswerable is the beginning of an event … if you will, an event of language, timing and gesture, experimentation and conceptualizing. The more important consideration in a “what is ____?” question is not the answer, but the asking.. How is it we know so little about the art form?