The animator as artist, the artist as animator

Abstract

[EN] Alan Cholodenko (New Jersey, 1940) is not only one of the most important theorists in animation, but he has made animation a way of understanding life. There is no art without ‘anima’, without the desire to breathe life; nor is there animation that is not, basically, ‘lifedeath’, a (re)animated life. With a post-structuralist thought, following his mentors Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida, Alan Cholodenko has built a solid philosophy of animation around the idea of 'animatic apparatus', an essential term to understand the revolution that involves the imaging technologies that support current science, culture and society. ‘The animator as an artist, the artist as an animator", an essay as personal as it is penetrating, exposes the fundamental axis of his thinking about drawing as a seductive and deconstructive gesture.

[ES] Alan Cholodenko (Nueva Jersey, 1940) no solo es uno de los teóricos más importantes de la animación, sino que ha hecho de la animación una forma de entender la vida. No hay arte sin ánima, sin deseo de insuflar vida; ni hay animación que no sea, en el fondo, ‘lifedeath’, vida/muerte, (re)animación. Con un pensamiento de corte postestructuralista, seguidor de sus mentores Jean Baudrillard y Jacques Derrida, Alan Cholodenko ha construido una sólida filosofía de la animación cuyo centro es el ‘aparato animático’ (‘the animatic apparatus’), un término esencial para comprender la revolución que implica las tecnologías de la imagen que vertebran la ciencia, la cultura y la sociedad actuales. En “El animador como artista, el artista como animador”, un artículo tan personal como penetrante, se expone el eje fundamental de su pensamiento en torno al dibujo como gesto seductor y deconstructivo.