This block of lectures, screenings, discussions, close readings, speculations explores animation in its broadest senses as representation, as a life force, as imparted mobility, as a concern of nature, as a concern of artificial intelligence. Animation is a holder for all sorts of ideas about liveliness and petrification, as these emerge variously across time and surge in the digital era. Our route through animated forms is guided by the concerns of the elements, ones as delineated in the classical world (fire, air, water, earth, ether). Each session begins with a presentation and then we will explore together related images, video clips, artworks, trash culture, pieces of writing, poems, gifs in order to conceptualise what animation is or might be today and what is elemental in our world and how the digital meets the animated in unforeseen or long predictable ways.

Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include various studies and translations of Walter Benjamin, as well as Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016) and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018). Future work includes research for an exhibition at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art on the chemical industries of the North East of England and the poetic and political significance of butter in Ireland for the Limerick Biennale 2020.

10 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms information, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The participation fee 300€.

Scholarships are available for participants from Kosovo.