We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Before and After Ghostcatching: Animation, Primitivism, and the Choreography of Vitality.
- Authors
Warren-Crow, Heather
- Abstract
Primitivism gathers together several hegemonic lines of thinking about otherness as a function of underdevelopment vis-à-vis the Western, white male subject. This article presents an analysis of the animated dance video Ghostcatching (Bill T. Jones, Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, 1999) that offers a framework for understanding the piece's thoughtful relationship to the history of primitivism in animation. Positioning the dancing body and the motion-capture apparatus at the center of understandings of the supposedly pre-rational and uncivilized, I argue that Ghostcatching is an expert commentary on animation's long-standing investment in notions of human origins and development. Ghostcatching and related animations (including its stereoscopic 3-D reworking, After Ghostcatching; Betty Boop cartoons of the 1930s; the Dancing Baby meme; and work by media artist Ian Cheng) provide a lens for examining technologies and discourses of motion capture, revealing the economy of vitality through which the energy of raced, infantilized, and animalized bodies are circulated.
- Subjects
JONES, Bill T., 1954-; CALLOWAY, Cab, 1907-1994; CHENG, Ian; MOTION capture (Cinematography); ESHKAR, Shelley
- Publication
Screen Bodies, 2017, Vol 2, Issue 1, p22
- ISSN
2374-7552
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3167/screen.2017.020103