Exploring ‘vibrant matter’ in animation making

in Language and Intercultural Communication (2020), 20(5), 464-481

The text examines how human, objects and digital technology interacted in the creation of a short animated story, and how human identity became entangled in this process. We explore animation making as an ... [more ▼]

The text examines how human, objects and digital technology interacted in the creation of a short animated story, and how human identity became entangled in this process. We explore animation making as an assemblage in which all parts, human and non-human, play an agentive role, in shaping the story, the story making, and the story makers, mutually transforming each other. We posit that this engagement, by putting a strong emphasis on exploring the materiality of objects, produces a deand reterritorializing effect. It favors exploring new relationships and identity positions, by breaking away, temporarily, from human-made, hierarchical systems of relationships, built on comparison, copying and competition, and by inviting experimentation and discovery of the ‘not yet known’ in a hierarchy flat, immersive, horizontally flowing process. ‘Animating objects’ decenters from the conventional meaning of objects, by broadening the ‘linguistic sign’ and the purpose and functionality of objects in daily life. It engages humans in forming empathetic relationships with objects, by humanizing and inter-acting with them, as if experimenting with an alter ego, or a new self. ‘Animating objects’ therefore has the potential to sensitize for and build empathetic capacity, not only in relation to the self-animated object, but also in relation to humans sharing a similar experience, wherein we see interesting potential for education in contexts of diversity, intercultural communication and beyond. We investigate the personal experience of the co-author, Gohar, as an identity journey and as a transformative process that emerged from the encounter between her and the carrots, her selected objects for story making. We draw on ethnographic, observational data, video-recordings, retrospective recorded and transcribed interviews, and reflective writing, which we analyse by making connections to theories of new materialism. [less ▲]