Monday 20 February 2012

What... is... Art...?

Recently went to the Moving Pictures panel discussion at the Jerwood Space, London. Moving Pictures is an online Dance Animation exhibition presented by Animate Projects and Portland Green Cultural Projects.

The panel consisted of a combination of film makers, producers, and writers, and the conversation covered some interesting topics. We discussed the difficulty of capturing 3 dimensional dance in 2 dimensions, the difficulty of capturing the 'weight' of  dancer in (drawn) animation, the tension between Dance and Animation, was the animation disrupting or creating the dance, what part does music (or the absence of music) play.

Perhaps inevitably, the question was asked 'what is Dance Animation', to which the clear headed and pertinent audience member behind me replied 'We could spent all day discussing this question, and the outcome probably wouldn't be very interesting, so how about we move on?'

This may sound a bit strong, but words cannot express my gratitude, and this is a phrase I shall remember from here on out as a guard against the 'but what is art?' question, and all it's variants. At certain moments and in certain scenarios this type of question can be fine, but it was fantastic to see someone being less concerned with being right or clever, and more concerned with whether or not the discussion was interesting.