Watching an animation film does at least two things simultaneously: firstly, it immerses you in a stream of story told in images, sounds and movements, but at the same time, at the very depth of your perception, it also registers an abundance of graphic compositions. These two impressions operate in tandem to create a cinematic experience in which all the elements have an effect on the viewer, even if only a fraction of them are consciously registered. In contrast to live-action films, an animation film is not the art of reality captured in a series of images, but of reality recreated as a series of images: its components could very well be interpreted as works of art in themselves if we were to stop the film and turn to its images to explore their own meaning, their own temporal reading. Each frame contains a separate story, with life and drama pulsating in it - but this multiplicity is transformed in the fluxus of the moving image into a new mental whole of a completely different nature, which cannot be grasped by a mere enumeration of the set that makes it up, just as in Zeno’s aporia the momentary spatial coordinates of the arrow do not add up to the movement itself. The essence of animated works by definition is that objects or drawings that are inanimate in themselves, when arranged in rapid succession, come to life, so to speak, and obtain a soul. The real magic, however, lies in the parallel perception of the timelines projected upon each other: our biological self recognises the landscapes, figures, gestures and causal links in the film, just as we find our way around the world in everyday life – but our aesthetic self can also marvel at the frozen images of the moments and reflect on these works of art twenty-four times a second. So anyone watching an animated film is in fact, confronted with the paradox of time. In this exhibition, the timeline of the creator and the timeline of the viewer are not projected into one another or merged, but are shown side by side.
Tamás Liszka
media artist, film producer