The LAR Chronicles
https://www.neme.org/projects/hosted/the-lar-chronicles
Radical Domains of Anima
The Lab for Animation Research (LAR), housed within the Department of Fine Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology, explores the intersections between animation, filmmaking, and visual art. The LAR Chronicles: Radical Domains of Anima introduces the centre’s evolution through art collaborations, experimental research, and the investigatory practice of making animation artworks. This collection provides breakthrough insights into how visual art communicates with contemporary audiences and cultures through filmic time, space, and topological transformations.
Participating artists
Nicos Synnos, Christos Panayiotou, Marinos Savva, Christos Georgiou, Nina Sumarac, Charalambos Margaritis, Frosoulla Kofterou, Yiannis Christidis, Rosa Menkman.
About LAR
The Lab for Animation Research (LAR) is an interdisciplinary research centre operating within the Department of Fine Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology. Our research investigates new ways of understanding the relationship between animation, filmmaking, and visual art by exploring the intersections between them. Situated within this experimental space, LAR interweaves conventional methodologies with expanded perspectives to create alternative dialogues that inform our teaching practices and research projects.
LAR’s practice-based investigations emphasise the meta-narratives that emerge when aligning cinematic space with animation motion and time. The visual, aesthetic, and theoretical discourses created within this praxis move beyond the contextual possibilities of studying each field in isolation. Our aim to break new ground in this way is what drives our collaborations with students, scholars, filmmakers, and artists.
LAR’s research correlates with the following areas:
- LAR studies the composition of visual animation by examining filmic time and space, motion development, and narrative structure while considering the impact of evolving technologies to better articulate contemporary hybrid interactions.
- Our current research practices investigate how the filmic instant and animation looping sequences influence animation’s visual and narrative aspects. Aligning these narratives with the compositional principles of movement and behaviour in animated media, design, film, and new media technologies, provisions breakthrough insights into visual art and communication practices as well as contemporary audiences.
- LAR contextualises these investigations through an interdisciplinary lens that considers theoretical and philosophical perspectives to create an interpretive framework with far-reaching possibilities. Our research resonates specifically with prevailing socio-historical and cultural concerns about selfhood and otherness, explored as animated narratives coded in the fabric of space, time, and topological transformations.
- Querying the malleability of animation as a discipline through this exploratory lens has significant educational and research implications, both of which work towards developing transformative mediums of communication and expression. Students are encouraged to critically engage with these approaches while tracing the lineage of expanded animation, cinema, and art into their work and studies. Furthermore, LAR plays an active role in synthesising these investigations into research-based practices that inform multidisciplinary collaborations, especially within the fields of animation art and film.
Rosa Menkman’s artwork presented in this exhibition was co-funded by Creative Europe, and produced by NeMe for the EMAP platform.
