Animate Locate - It is all about location- locations which give us comfort or discomfort, allow us to imagine, laugh, squirm- locations that transport us or bring us quickly, and sometimes harshly, back to reality. This selection of animations from around the globe all touch somehow on the animator's place within the world.

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Screening order

Johannes Nyholm, Sweden, The Tale of Little Puppetboy, 4:20, stop motion, 2005

Chapter 1: A lady visitor. Puppetboy is a little guy who tries to cope with everyday cares - it could be a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner or VCR, or more serious concerns like relations to the opposite sex. It is a combination of slapstick humour and existentialist drama.

Johannes Nyholm is a Swedish artist, animator, and filmmaker. His work has been presented in film and video festivals, and art exhibitions throughout Europe. Including: VideoLounge Roda Sten Gothenburg 2006, Anifest Prague 2006, Space 301 Mobile, "Daydream Nation" The Tank, NY 2006, Animafest Zagreb 2006, Gescheidle Gallery Chicago, MIACIA Tokyo.

Virgilio Villoresi and Vivì Ponti, Italy, Fridgedaire, 5:41, cut-out, 2005

Frigidaire is a stop motion animation about the birth, transformation, death and resurrection of a young girl. A hand takes her through a mad trip inside the house "Frigidaire". We took images from old magazines from the 40's-60's and from our reasearch of old books. The video is made with the collage technic and the sound is made by cuttings of old film. This is our first video together.

Virgilio Villoresi, is an Italian famous Video jockey(Vj Virgilio)and videomaker/ animator. In 2005 he started na audio-video project called OTO with Marco Puccini. His work is in the most important festival: Netmage '04,'05,'06 editions, TDK audiovisiva '04,'05 editions. He works with musicians (populous, ether, Marco Puccini and others). He now lives in Milan.

Vivì Ponti worked as a fashion designer at Roberto Cavalli from 2000 to 2003. Now she lives in Milan and is working on her own collection.

Meredith Root, USA, Anxiety Invention, 3:00, ink on paper, 2006

An orchestra of crickets moves us through a shaky landscape of shifting perspectives and unstoppable metamorphoses. Buildings and cities collapse, balls collide and explode, nature is perverted and mutates—-all is not right in the world.

Meredith Root received her BA in filmmaking from Bard College, where she was first introduced to experimental film. She was immediately drawn to animation, finding the miniature world a capable stage on which to play out her dramas, and enjoying the control of frame-by-frame manipulation. She is currently an Assistant Professor of film at The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee where she runs the animation program.

Norma V Toraya, USA, Army of Me, 4:08, mixed media, 2004

Army of Me is about a vacant dry ill-libido desert wasteland of female bounty hunters and rock-formed males. A climactic chase and irrigated ejaculation of subway art nouveau tiled joy. Army of Me was made on the computer mushing together photos, video, and traditional drawn animation. Live footage was shot in the desert outside of Los Angeles.

"Some things in life are slick, polished and blatantly obvious. But for Norma V. Toraya, who's also known as Crankbunny, these are exactly the things she shies away from. Instead, she's more inclined to explore timeless concepts like subtly, curiousity, texture and awkwardness. Her hand-drawn and computer-animated creations are often described as dark, sometimes noir and always magical." Crankbunny.com

Anita Allyn, USA, Imaginary Lines, 2:20, 2D digital, 2005

Anita Allyn’s Imaginary Lines creates collage from imagery taken from American Road movies. Through precise editing and digital animation manipulation, a new plotline emerges that recasts the American idealization of freedom and independence. The absence of stable, urban cities reflects transition and mobility; the isolated individuals reveal alienation and remoteness.

Anita Allyn is an interdisciplinary artist living in Philadelphia. She creates works in video, installation, digital media, and photography. Allyn is a graduate of Kansas City Art institute (B.F.A.) and the Museum School, Boston (M.F.A.). Her work has been exhibited in Moscow, Russia; Columbia, South America; Tel Aviv, Israel; Calcutta, India; New York, Massachusetts and Philadelphia. Her work explores questions of narrativity, immediacy, memory and indexing. The works include different formal strategies including documentary, personal narrative and abstraction/looping to investigate the positioning of truth telling in a post-video age.She works independently and collaboratively as a an artist/critical thinker; part of the Philadelphia artist collective, Vox Populi, and an active member of the board for Society for Photographic Education Mid-Atlantic. She is Associate Professor, Fine Arts Coordinator at The College of New Jersey.

J Tobias Anderson, Sweden, Whereto I Go, 4:46, digital animation, 2005

A video that displays a man's confrontation with his own self. A meeting that is not always as rewarding as one might have hoped. Classic filmsequences have been re-cut and animated to illustrate this dilemma, and the final imagery is created in a highly contrasted style, with characters echoing of decades from long ago.

Videoartist focusing mainly on animation and appropriation art. Experimenting with a number of different techniques, such as video, painting, illustration, sound and music, with the main work still being made for video - over 30 videoworks have been created between 1997 and 2007.
Explorations with the starting point in material that somehow can be considered generally well known are usually the bases for the creation of the works. Often the videos are based on cinematographic issues, and deal with visual or audiovisual explorations.
Has been screened at numerous occasions, in exhibitions and festivals worldwide.
Represented with videoworks at several art institutions, among them Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Thessia Machado, Brazil/USA, Today I'm Here, 00:45 , pixellation, 2006

A compressed account of the impermanence of memories.The act of forgetting is transposed to the skin as I walk the streets of the Lower East Side until the word past, embossed on my arm, fades away...The gradual smoothing and eventual fading of impressions, an intimate and intangible process, is rendered concrete.

Thessia Machado is a Brazilian artist living and working in New York. Her work explores the integration of materials through installation and digital animations. Machado received a BFA from Hunter College, New York.  Her work has been exhibited in New York, Florida, Amsterdam and Paris, and residencies in Vermont and Florida. In 2005 Machado was a recipient of fellowships from the Bronx Museum and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Eric Dyer, USA, Copenhagen Cycles, 6:35, zoetrope, 2005

A bicyclist travels through a fantastical, collaged reconstruction of Denmark's capital city. Eric Dyer combines the pre-cinema zoetrope with high-definition digital video technology to explore the kinetics of Copenhagen.

Dyer spent eight months in Copenhagen, Denmark on a Fulbright Fellowship. He rode around on a bicycle, collected source footage of the city's moving elements, printed and cut the sequences, then built about 30 zoetrope-like paper sculptures. "Copenhagen Cycles" is composed entirely of unprocessed shots of the spinning sculptures. Dyer invented this filmmaking process while attempting to animate zoetropes with strobe lights. He found that using a high shutter speed on certain video camera allows for a flicker-free registration of the zoetrope elements.Eric is a Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore, Maryland County. He has won many film awards including Director’s Choice Award, 2005 Black Maria Film and Video Festival, Best Experimental Film, 2004 Red Bank International Film Festival, Chris Fayne Award for Best Animated Film, 2004 Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Nominee, Best Experimental Film, 2004 Rome Intíl Film Festival.

Kim Collmer, Germany/USA, Berlin Skin, 2:00, mixed media, 2007

Painted photographs come to life through animation techniques- paint on glass, drawing, and digital techniques. Buildings and textures become places for daydreams and memory.

Kim Collmer is a Professor at the Fachhochschule Schwaebisch Hall where she teaches design and animation. She has exhibited internationally in festivals and exhibitions, with reviews published in the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine. Kim also curated animation screenings last year for the Director‘s Lounge.

Cecilia Lundqvist, Sweden, Making Pancakes, 4:58, hand-drawn, 2005

"Making Pancakes" is an animated video, showing a woman and a man in a totally unbalanced relationship. At times we see a seemingly everyday course of events, and other times they are in a more threatening situation. The man is filled with self-satisfaction and yet he shines from an uncertainty and a longing for acknowledgement. The woman acts in a numb and routine way, doing all she can to uphold the façade. By changing the standard and placing the domestic violence outdoors, where it’s visible, and the upholding of the perfect façade hidden behind the closed doors of the home, the absurdity of this behaviour is revealed. The trivial mistakes while making dinner serve as the catalyst of the violent outrages, they serve as the last straw.

Born 1971 in Eskilstuna, Sweden.
Currently living and working in Stockholm.Artist specializing in animation and since 1994 working almost exclusively with videos, which have been screened at numerous museums, galleries and festivals worldwide. More than 20 videoworks have been created between 1994 and 2006, works that generally are narrative and deal with issues like domestic violence, power structures and human behavior. Represented with videoworks at several art institutions, among them Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Hei Cheng and Mike Chan, UK, Board, 1:00, Rostrum camera, 2005

Surprising and playful travel on the board. Escaping from reality and
bringing surreal imagination to real life. A world of living fruits.

Hei Cheng- Cheng Chun Hei was born in Hong Kong where he trained first in painting and chinese calligraphy. He received his BA in Graphic Design at Saint Marting College of Art for Animation. His work has been screened at various venues including: Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Central St.Martins' Lethaby Gallery, Short Ends World Film Schools Festival, ICA Cinema, Hidden Art Open Studio, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Bloomberg Space
Mike Chan
Currently completing his MA at Central Saint Martin Mike has completed 9 short films.

Lisa Barcy, USA, Woman Without a Past, Mini DV, 5:00, stop-motion/ collage, 2004

This film was originally conceived as an artist-book. I found the title in the local thrift store and thought the title was intriguing enough to explore, although I must admit I didn’t bother to read the book first before “re-appropriating” it. At first it was a sort of one-liner; given the title “Woman Without a Past” I thought I would simply paint all the pages of the book black, but my propensity to animate took over and next thing I knew it was a flip-book. Soon small repeated bits of text from other dime store romance novels found their way in. I found almost identical word usage in every book, cut them out and categorized them so similar phrases would animate together. I began thinking about phrases that pretend to be descriptive but are actually futile when it comes to revealing anything about a person. This piece is ultimately about privacy and the desire to not share information and how that in itself is revealing.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Film, Video, and New Media (1999). BFA, 1991, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MA, 2002, Columbia College, Chicago. Screenings: Women in the Director's Chair Film Festival; Henson Festival of International Puppetry, NY; Image Union, WTTW Channel 11, Chicago. Animator: There TV, Calabash Animation, Tricky.

David Shrigley/ Chris Shepard, UK, Who I Am And What I Want, 7:20, hand-drawn, 2006

A scribbled, strangely funny but highly unsettling examination of the human condition. The story of a man who bares his emotions, history, hang ups and desires in all of their dysfunctional absurdity then leaves us to assemble not only his identity but to question our own.

David graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1991. His works on paper, photographs and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, and he is the author of more than 20 books of drawings. He lives in Glasgow.
Chris completed an Animation BA at West Surrey College of Art and Design in 1992. He is co-founder of London animation company Slinky Pictures with producer Maria Manton, and has directed short films, commercials and comedy series. He made the prize-winning The Broken Jaw in 1997. His first animate! commission was the hybrid film Dad's Dead 2002, Best Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards 2003 and winner of a huge number of other prizes.

Johannes Nyholm + Jen DeNike, Sweden and USA, Fever Dreams, Shot footage with animation, looped film, 2006

Fever Dreams has its origin and source of inspiration in our mutual experience of hallucinogenic dreams - dreams that come to you when half awake, half asleep, that are often frightening and cannot be distinguished from reality. Two women, it’s hard to differentiate them, in a white burnt out room - an empty space, their eyes flutter widely open and then shut, pupils gone, their gaze completely empty, turned inwards. Exaggerated, exhorting whispering voices, permeate from all directions, interrupted by planes of red static, creating a hypnotic pace that channels an invisible delirium into a schizophrenic psyche.

Jen DeNike is a video artist who lives and works in NYC.She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Tensta Konsta Stockholm 2007. Printed Matter NY recently launched her book "Seven Suns" a conceptional artist book on mortality. Her work has been shown internationally including: a solo exhibition at KW Berlin 2006, Julia Stoschek Collection -Video Program Dusseldorf 2005, PS1 Greater NY, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Space 301 Mobile, ART ROCK Rockefeller Center 2006.

Steve Macadams, USA, "selbst zerstören engagueren sich", digital animation, looped film, 2006

"selbst zerstören engagueren sich" is an abstract digital film about technology, media abundance, and attention span. High tech, but dated, overloading, glitching and about to explode!

Steve Macadams is an artist living in Cleveland America. He works in design and direction.

Thanks to all participating artists!!!