Workshot 2.0: Transhumanism

19. - 29. 9. 2024 / zoom, Vetrinj mansion, Maribor Puppet Theatre

Transhumanism: hybrids, automata, utopia, technological enhancement of bio-organisms, human condition in transit, and beyond-human desires

Welcome to the 3-phases workshop of concept-based animation filmmaking where practical execution of a short animated project concludes the process of learning critical approaches to media and understanding film as a complex mode of artistic communication. 

The Participants will learn stop motion animation filmmaking from SOFIA CARRILLO, a stop motion poet of fractured machineries and found objects (Mexico); scriptwriting from EWA BORYSEWICZ, an experimental filmmaker and animator with an inclination towards documentary practices (Poland); while the skills of critical literacy will be introduced by the social activist with the background in sociology, URŠKA BREZNIK and KAJA FIEDLER (Slovenia).

14th StopTrik IFF attempts to explore, scrutinize, and poke about in the intense  relationship between art-house animation and the future- and enhancement-oriented philosophies stretched between “techno-optimism” and nihilism. The future is now (already for some time) and trying to boycott the fast-paced technological development seems as naïve as the recklessness of stamepedo rushing after promises of an everlasting afterlife. While culturally transhumanism is deeply rooted in sci-fi genre, the core humanistic questions found within this paradigm, have been reverberating with the artists throughout the decades. The ‘future shock’ brought on the 20th century mass-audiences by the cinema, radio, aircrafts, and atomic bomb, was all different but possibly comparable with the anxieties accompanying us when encountering the visuality of hi-tech securitization, complexity of architecture of disinformation, or the AI-assisted/generated artworks. Noticing similarities will not give us answers valid in our times. We seek to understand what kind of hierarchies, social relationships, and sensitivities will develop among the humans and non-human actors in the environment that is changing in a way that will not allow to be replenished or subdued again. James Bridle in Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines. The Search for Planetary Intelligence (2022) presented powerful arguments for converging focuses on human enhancement, variety of non-human intelligences (living beings and technological ones), and ecohumanities as means of overcoming the long-standing myths of human uniqueness and the narratives of technological determinism: “We must find ways to reconcile our technological prowess and sense of human uniqueness with an earthy sensibility and an attentiveness to the interconnectedness of all things. We must learn to live with the world, rather than seek to dominate it. In short, we must discover an ecology of technology.” Stop motion animation may be a medium to express this, you just need to find right metaphors, right characters, right transformations, in other words – you need to find a right story.

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE: TIME & CONTENT

Phase 1: 19. 9. 2024, Critical Literacy workshop with Urška Breznik and Kaja Fiedler, zoom

Through critical literacy workshop we will address knowledge as a social construct and deepen our ability for critical understanding, interpretation and production of information. With various theoretical tools we will reveal the relationship between knowledge and power and develop a critical attitude towards our own knowledge. We will raise awareness about economic, political and social interests that affect knowledge, information and the content we chance upon or produce on a daily basis. With the help of critical discourse analysis we will deconstruct audiovisual texts and search for hidden agendas and missing voices. During this phase you will learn about:
• Power relations in the society and the ways to analyze them
• How accessing knowledge and information is related to power
• How to apply critical discourse analysis to written, visual and audiovisual texts

Phase 2: 22. - 24. 9. 2024, Script writing workshop with Ewa Borysewicz, live event

The scriptwriting in the field of animation is quite a unique platform of storytelling. Animation is obviously a medium that gives countless possibilities, which may be both a blessing and a curse. Harvest disaster happens and overwhelms us. Throughout the workshop you will get a chance to learn how to find your way in the creative process of writing and how to make your story not only personal and artistic but also communicative and emotionally moving. The workshop will be based on theory and practice. You’ll learn how to:
• Use scriptwriting basic rules and tools
• Analyze a film dramaturgically
• Find the core of your story and make it work throughout the scenes

Phase 3: 25. - 29. 9. 2024, Script writing workshop with Sofia Carrillo, live event

Our daily life activities involves a non-stop utilitarian relationship with objects and machinery. To this day, billions of objects and machinery survive their anonymous creators, it subsist despite having stopped functioning for the purpose for which they were created. As artists, we can apply our passion to provide movement, life, soul and give voice to these entities, to the other, to the otherness. Giving voice and meaning to the action of animating an object can become a poetical action, an investigation, a meditation or a game, while we are telling stories.
• Another point of view: We will investigate the history written in the marks or design of an object, automaton or machinery, in search of telling, either a story with the support of the object, or telling the story of the object.
• Communication exercises: We will identify communication keys to establish a dialogue with others and seek to apply it with objects, robots or machinery.
• In search of an animation style: We will search for the unique way in which an object, automaton or machinery can express itself according to its morphology (rhythm and movement).

MENTORS’S BIO

Urška Breznik is a Sinologist and art historian, director of Pekarna Magdalenske mreže since 2013. She coordinates projects in the field of youth and cultural and develops and leads critical literacy workshops and seminars for young people, youth and pedagogical workers and general public. Executive producer of StopTrik IFF.

Kaja Fiedler is a Sociologist employed at Pekarna Magdalenske mreže since 2016. Developing and leading critical literacy workshops and seminars for young people, youth and pedagogical workers and general public. Coordinating educational project in the field of housing cooperatives, climate crisis and workers rights. Producer of music events at StopTrik IFF and editor of StopTrik IFF website and social networks.

Ewa Borysewicz is a Director, screenwriter, visual artist and university pedagogue. Graduate of Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice and Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. Currently a PhD student at Polish National Film School in Łódź. The author of award-winning animated films, of which To Thy Heart was nominated for e.g. Golden Bear at Berlinale Shorts and won Grand Prix at Animateka Festival in Ljubljana. She took part in the artist-in-residence program in Tokyo and in Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart; collaborated with polish public TVP Kultura channel, Arsenał Gallery (Białystok), Silesia Film. She was a member of the Animation Board in Polish Filmmakers Association. She works and lives in Warsaw and has just finished The Miracle – her hybrid live-action/animated short film, an adaptation of the novel by Ignacy Karpowicz.

FILMOGRAPHY
2024 Cud / The Miracle, live-action, 30 min – script, directing, casting
2020 Principessa, live-action, 22 min – directing, script
2019 Ktoś mnie pokochał / Someone Who Loves Me, live-action, 21 min – directing, script
2019 Szczęśliwe miejsce, które ma poetę / Joyous Place and a Poet, documentary, 29 min –  directing, script
2018 Wiking Tappi / Tappi the Viking, animated series for children, 26x11 min – director of the episode "W obronie przed śnieżycą"
2017 Widzimy się / C U, documentary, 9 min – directing, script
2017 Nie utoniemy / We Won't Sink, documentary, 12 min – directing, script
2016 Cebulowa Panna / Onion Girl, live-action, 12 min – directing, script
2015 Czarodziejska Góra / Magic Mountain, animated feature-length documentary, 89 min – director of the visuals and animation of the segment (animation director assistant)
2013 Do serca Twego / To Thy Heart, animation, 10 min – directing, script, voice acting
2009 Kto by pomyślał? / Who would have thought?, animation, 12 min – directing, script
2007 No dobra / Alright, film animowany, 10 min – directing, script

Sofia Carrillo is a Stop Motion Animation Film Director. Winner of two silver Ariel for Best Animated short film from The Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences: Prita Noire in 2011, and Cerulia, 2017. She is also the creator of the interstitials for the XX Anthology Horror Film, directed by Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin and Karin Kusama (Magnolia Pictures and XYZ Films), premiered at Sundance in 2017. Her work has participated at Annecy, Sundance, Chicago, Tricky Women, Sitges, Habana film festivals among others. Sofia is an AMPAS (Oscar) and AMACC (Ariel) Academy member. She  also collaborated in the second unit of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Annecy 2024 Residency participant with Insectarium, her first feature length film.

FILMOGRAPHY
2005 Vertigo - short animation
2008 Fuera de control - animation short
2011 Prita Noire - animation short
2012 Adaptacion - animation short
2013 La Casa Triste - animation short
2014 El Corazon del sastre - animation short
2017 XX - director of title segment in horror live-action anthology
2017 Cerulia - animation short
2018 The Wandering Witch - experimental live-action horror
2023 Dragged Beneath the Shadows - co-director of feature-length live-action horror

Sofia Carrillo’s workshop will be assisted by two outstanding and talented artists of young generation:

Lene Lekše (1995) je leta 2021 magistrirala na oddelku za kiparstvo na Akademiji za likovno umetnost in oblikovanje (ALUO) v Ljubljani. Je prejemnica Nagrade skupine OHO in dveh študentskih nagrad ALUO. Sodelovala je na več skupinskih razstavah, med drugim v Vent Space (Talin, 2020), Likely to happen (Beograd, 2022), Galeriji Škuc (Ljubljana, 2019) in Centru Esseker (Osijek, 2017), na festivalu Curated by v Galeriji Krobath (Dunaj, 2022) in v okviru Svetlobne gverile (Ljubljana, 2023). Njeno delo je bilo leta 2019 uvrščeno na 9. trienale sodobne umetnosti U3, Živo in mrtvo, v Moderni galeriji v Ljubljani. Samostojno se je predstavila v Galeriji DobraVaga (Ljubljana, 2019), Galeriji Alkatraz (Ljubljana, 2020) in Galeriji P74 (Ljubljana, 2022). Leta 2021 je prejela dvomesečno rezidenco za mlade umetnike na Residency Unlimited v New Yorku. Poleg umetniške prakse se ukvarja tudi z vodenjem delavnic o sodobni umetnosti in izobraževalnimi programi iz področja filmske vzgoje za otroke in mlade. Od leta 2014 deluje kot mentorica na delavnicah animiranega filma pri društvu SLON. V okviru festivalov Animateka in Stoprtik asistira produkcijske delavnice. Leta 2023 je vodila likovni krožek na gimnaziji Poljane ter prevzela koordinacijo in mentorstvo pedagoških vsebin v Ljubljanski Mestni galeriji. V galeriji p74 od leta 2018 vodi program “parasitki”- pogovori in delavnice o sodobni umetnosti za vrtce.

I am Titouan Tillier, and I'm a human being (I swear). One day I discovered stop-motion and my life changed. I am now an addict. I have seen many doctors but they all agree : I have to keep animating if I want to stay alive. So be it. In 2023, I co-directed Human Resources and since then I am happy.  Bonus fact : I'm french ! croissant croissant

WORKSHOT 2.0: TRANSHUMANISM is a project organized by Pekarna magdalenske mreže through cooperation with a network of universities collaborating in the frames of BIP ERASMUS NETWORK, coordinated by the University of Nova Gorica School of Arts (Slovenia), and involving the following partners: Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Austria); University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (Wels, Austria); New Bulgarian University in Sofia (Bulgaria); Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (Croatia); EKA Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn (Estonia); Universidade Lusófona de Lisboa (Portugal).

Ewa Borysewicz's participation in the project is supported financially by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute that is promoted by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage and supervises culture.pl