Curated by Juan Antonio Álvarez Reyes, the exhibition GEOPOLITICS OF ANIMATION explores the genre of artistic animation along two paths: the historical, represented with works by classic creators who were significant in regard of the idea behind the title and the themes touched upon in the exhibition, and the broadly geographical, which showcases contemporary creativity. Artists from all over the world are represented, as is their wide use of techniques borrowed from animated film -that is, "image to image" cinematography- such as cartoon, plasticine, and computer-assisted digital animation.
However innocent they may seem at first, especially in the context of children's animated film, these works carry implicit messages regarding the values and morals of their host cultures and the relationships these have with other, foreign cultures. Indeed, one of the aims of the exhibition, which plays on the juxtaposition of particular works, is to provide viewers with information so that they may better understand and incorporate other, manifestly different, worlds.
From its inception, animation, while linked to the entertainment industry, has always been associated with the spreading of ideologies and systems of global understanding. The animated stories presented in this exhibition are powerful indicators of the transformations undergone by cultural forms that were once strictly preceptive into the exchange currency of artistic expression they are today; of the perversion of their earlier forms into contemporary representations. These works reveal how, despite the pervasiveness of today's cultural impositions, certain sensibilities succeed in defying the prevailing ideologies and mythologies and tap into areas of knowledge that lie beyond the grasp of centralising controls, where they can use -and perhaps recover- a technique as ancient and free as that of animation.
As a time reference, GEOPOLITICS OF ANIMATION offers a selection of classical creators which includes Segundo de Chomón, Lotte Reiniger, Kenzo Masaoka and Norman McLaren. Their works are proof of animated film's historical awareness, an artistic manifestation that has served as much to encourage individual critical reflection as to spread all types of ideological propaganda. Perhaps its connection, from the start, with what are considered as childhood's two principal fountains of wealth -secrets and silence- explains in part its growing success.
In addition to these and other classic artists, the exhibition also showcases works by contemporary creators as disparate as Narda Alvarado, Kolkoz and Gili Dolev, in which visitors can, in one same space, journey among worlds while taking in the proposals of Zhou Xiaohu, who offers a cynical vision of the media icons made in USA, and Kara Walker, whose silhouettes speak of the tragic racial conflicts lived in America's deep south. William Kentridge's piece are vital in understanding the history of a land; those of Nils Norman and Tintin Wulia carry a subtle criticism of unchecked urban development; Takashi Ishida and Naoyuki Tsuji are simply poetic; Extramücadele and Nathalie Djurberg politically engaged; not to mention other animated pieces that reinterpret the traditional narratives of their creators' birthplaces. Thus, the work of Tomoko Konoike offers us a glimpse of the Japanese mindframe, and that of Robin Rhode recalls the African oral narrative tradition.
Many are the themes touched upon: post-colonial societies, migratory flows, criticism of abusive policies, the ecological crisis, the consequences of war, the consumerist fever, but also family breakdown, existential angst in large, modern-day cities, the sense of the absurd and emptiness, the loss of privacy and historical memory, the emergence of new transnational heroes, angels or demons in the third millennium.
Cinema records real images in continuous movement, but in animation there is no real movement to record; images are produced one by one, so that when they are projected they give the illusion of movement. This peculiarity is what allows the creator to invent highly original narratives, to create fictional worlds in which anything is possible, where the laws of physics or metaphysics can be transgressed. The advances in technology, photography, film, and video and the sophistication of the digital image have rendered animated representations increasingly complex. All this, coupled with the evolution of techniques, the transformation of the economy and the disarticulation of absolute cultural orders, means that the principle value of this exhibition lies in its ability to reveal the great theatre of today's world.
