• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.37
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• pp.509-537
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• 2014

This paper proposes 'postfilimc metamorphosis' and 'reanimation' as two concepts that aim at giving account to the aesthtetic tendencies and genealogies of what Suzanne Buchan calls 'pervasive animation', a category that refers to the unprecedented expansion of animation's formal, technological and experiential boundaries. Buchan's term calls for an interdisciplinary approach to animation by highlighting a range of phenomena that signal the growing embracement of the images and media that transcend the traditional definition of animation, including the lens-based live-action image as the longstanding counterpart of the animation image, and the increasing uses of computer-generated imagery, and the ubiquity of various animated images dispersed across other media and platforms outside the movie theatre. While Buchan's view suggests the impacts of digital technology as a determining factor for opening this interdisciplinary, hybrid fields of 'pervasive animation', I elaborate upon the two concepts in order to argue that the various forms of metamorphorsis and motion found in these fields have their historical roots. That is, 'postfilmic metamorphosis' means that the transformative image in postfimic media such as video and the computer differs from that in traditional celluloid-based animation materially and technically, which demands a refashioned investigation into the history of the 'image-processing' video art which was categorized as experimental animation but largely marginalized. Likewise, 'reanimation' cne be defined as animating the still images (the photographic and the painterly images) or suspending the originally inscribed movement in the moving image and endowing it with a neewly created movement, and both technical procedues, developed in experimental filmmaking and now enabled by a variety of moving image installations in contemporary art, aim at reconsidering the borders between stillness and movement, and between film and photography. By discussing a group of contemporary moving image artworks (including those by Takeshi Murata, David Claerbout, and Ken Jacobs) that present the aesthetic features of 'postfilmic metamorphosis' and 'reanimation' in relation to their precursors, this paper argues that the aesthetic implications of the works that pertain to 'pervasive animation' lie in their challenging the tradition dichotomies of the graphic/the live-action images and stillness/movement. The two concepts, then, respond to a revisionist approach to reconfigure the history and ontology of other media images outside the traditional boundaries of animation as a way of offering a refasioned understanding of 'pervasive animation'.