Becka Barker (Canada)
1 – NSCAD University (RPT Faculty)
Becka Barker
Becka Barker uses moving images, drawing, language, participatory performance, and collaboration to explore intersections of geography, memory, and mediated communication. A defining feature of her work is use of hand-crafted processes as media art methodology. She uses film and video frames are a starting point for developing intimate relationships among knowledge, learning, and experience. Becka’s work has been shown at Ottawa International Animation Festival, Seoul EXiS (winner 2007, Best International Film), Images Festival (Toronto), Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), KunstDoc Art Gallery (Seoul), and Echo Park Film Centre (Los Angeles). Her work has been supported by the National Film Board of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and Halifax Regional Municipality. She has been regular part-time faculty at NSCAD University since 2005 and was visiting faculty in the Film/Animation Department at SoonChunHyang University in the ROK 2008-2012.
Abstract
This paper outlines two recent projects that rely on social cartography and hand-drawn animation as methodologies for socially-engaged art. In The Hundred-Eyed Satellite (2014) I invited the public to draw world maps using only their personal memory as a reference. In BUOY (2017), people from Halifax, Nova Scotia rotoscoped frames from live-action film footage documenting the Halifax Explosion 100 years earlier. Animations were shot frame-by-frame, and the resulting animated movement visually described tensions between collaboration and individual expression, as well as intersections among individual lived experiences, geographies and histories.
These projects are foundational in my exploration of Deleuze’s concepts of “movement-image” and “time-image.” Crowd-sourcing individual drawings to be used as hand-drawn animated frames emphasizes reciprocity and distinctions between movement and “privileged instants.” In The Hundred-Eyed Satellite, continental edges and national boundaries appearing to undulate, shrink, grow, and rotate as a collective memory. BUOY layers past and present via rotoscoping. Both projects seek to approach–and transgress–boundaries between the idiosyncratic individual mark and coherent collective expression.
Please see
https://vimeo.com/245116266 (BUOY)
https://vimeo.com/109657917 (The Hundred-Eyed Satellite installed at Nocturne)
https://vimeo.com/137372342 (The World Around, a second piece with animation from The Hundred-Eyed Satellite)
Palavras-chave: rotoscope, social engagement, Deleuze, hand-drawn, frame-by-frame
