Adorno, Lewis Klahr and the Shuddering Image
- Submitting institution
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Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 216769
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema
- Publisher
- Edinburgh University Press
- ISBN
- 9780748694112
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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B - Art & Performance
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The chapter was developed from a peer reviewed paper given at Edinburgh University and The Edinburgh International Film Festival. It contributes to pioneering film scholarship on animation as documentary; this new area of research attends to the challenges of understanding how an animated film that is entirely constructed can claim to offer new truths. As an innovative subject within film theory the current scope of research into animated documentary has so far been methodically limited, for example being restricted to debates about genre categorisation. The chapter challenges that approach by addressing an overlooked but significant filmmaker, Lewis Klahr, and by applying areas of scholarship not normally used in animation studies. Klahr’s work has been shown internationally at institutions such as Tate Modern, but there has been little developed analysis of his 40-year filmmaking career. The chapter’s claim to originality comes partly from being one of the first critical examinations of Klahr’s work. By focusing on the mediated, fabricated quality of animated films, the chapter explores how Lewis Klahr’s work is based on a paradox inherent to animated films in that it foregrounds the way reality is constructed in animation. The essay proposes that Klahr’s work, whilst clearly not an animated documentary like Waltz with Bashir (2008), is both a documentary examination of post-war American consumer capitalism and simultaneously, in its form and method of construction, a document and product of the culture it ostensibly explores. The chapter draws on critical theory (Adorno, Benjamin and Kracauer) and more recent film and documentary studies (Steyerl) to examine how animation might document the power of 20th and 21st century capitalism and the era of ‘post-truth’ media. Whilst an apparently niche interest, it expands the scope and approach of critical animation studies, introducing contextual and analytical approaches not currently found in this area.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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