Boundary Crossings Institute

Suzanne Buchan

Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics in the School of Art and Design and Director of the Art and Design Research Institute (ADRI). Before joining Middlesex University in 2013 she was a professor and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. She completed her PhD at the University of Zurich, lectures internationally and has been a Guest Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Film, Theatre and Creative Writing, Pacific Northwest College of Art, and the Technical University of Stuttgart.

Eric Dyer

Eric Dyer is an artist who brings animation into the physical world with his sequential images, sculptures, installations, and performances. Beginning with his pioneering films Copenhagen Cycles (2006) and The Bellows March (2009), which were made by shooting spinning cut-paper and 3D-printed sculptures, Dyer continues to reinvent Victorian Era optical devices, exploring topics related to media history, our relationship with technology, kinetics as a form of artistic expression, and the relevance of physical presence in an increasingly digital world.

Dyer’s work has been widely exhibited at events and venues such as the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, international animation festivals in numerous countries, the screens of Times Square, and the Cairo and Venice Biennales. He has been honored as a Fulbright Fellow, Sundance New Frontier Artist, Creative Capital Artist, and Guggenheim Fellow. His fervent exploration of expression through motion has placed his work in books such as Re-imagining Animation: the Changing Face of the Moving Image, Pervasive Animation, Animation: A World History, and A New History of Animation. He has been a visiting artist at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, ECNU in Shanghai, and CalArts. Dyer teaches visual arts and animation at UMBC in Baltimore and is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York City.

Birgitta Hosea

Birgitta Hosea is a Swedish/Scottish artist, animated filmmaker and curator who works in the field of expanded animation. She explores diverse themes such as identity, spirituality and traces of existence. Her work combines a range of media such as shadow puppets, drawing, manipulated video, paper sculpture, animation, holographic projection, live video feeds and interactive technology – with the performance.

Birgitta received a PhD from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London; an MA from Sir John Cass School of Art, London Guildhall University and attended Glasgow School of Art. With a range of experience in education from PhD supervision to corporate software training, previously she was Head of Animation at the Royal College of Art and prior to that Course Director of MA Character Animation at Central Saint Martins in London and has taught in many of the leading educational establishments in the UK, Azerbaijan, USA, China, Holland, Romania, Austria and Sweden. Currently, she is Reader in Moving Image at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, where she is also Director of the Animation Research Centre. View Birgitta's blog.

Kota Ezawa

Kota Ezawa’s practice uses animated video to reconsider images from art history and popular culture, slide projections, light boxes, collages, and prints. His work has been shown is solo exhibitions at Hayward Gallery Project Space (London), Artpace San Antonio, and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. He participated in group exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Warhol Museum, and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Norman Klein

Norman Klein is a critic, urban and media historian, and novelist. His books include: The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory; Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon; The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects; Freud in Coney Island and Other Tales; and the database novel Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-86. He is currently completing an interactive historical science fiction novel titled The Imaginary Twentieth Century.

Pedro Serrazina

Pedro Serrazina (1968) is an animation director and lecturer. He is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Univ. Lusofona de Lisboa on “The Creation and Use of Animated Space in Animation”. As a practitioner he is currently finishing a site-specific sand animation installation for the Museum of Jewish Culture in the North of Portugal (due to open in September 2015), and has a s­­­hort animation film, “The Memory House”, in pre-production.

Paul Vester

Paul Vester was born in Cambridge, England in 1941 and brought up in London. He is a filmmaker, animator and installation artist. He studied at the Central School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, after which he worked as a designer, animator and director for several London production companies. In 1972 he established his own production company, Speedy Films. Speedy was built first on a series of short animations for Yorkshire Television, followed by, in partnership with Christian Gandon Productions in Paris, a run of French TV commercials which financed his film SUNBEAM (1980). Speedy afterwards produced many British and, later, U.S. TV commercials, winning numerous awards and financing his film, PICNIC (1987). With ABDUCTEES(1995) he was an early pioneer of the of animated documentary form. In 1997 he closed Speedy to move to Los Angeles. He is a Guggenheim Fellow for his film IN THE WOODS (2008). From 2006-2011 he co-directed the Experimental Animation Program at CalArts. Vester currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and teaches at CALARTS.

Paul Wells

Professor Paul Wells is Director of the Animation Academy, a research group dedicated to cutting edge engagement with Animation and related moving image practices. Paul is an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, having published widely in Animation and Film Studies, and written and directed numerous projects for theatre, radio, television and film.

Marina Zurkow

Crossing multiple disciplines with her practice, Marina Zurkow builds animations and participatory environments that are centered on humans and their relationship to animals, plants and the weather. Engaging audiences using film and video, sculpture, print graphics and public interventions, Zurkow’s work is by turns humorous and contemplative. Through the experience of her projects it is clear that nature has long been a stage upon which we project ourselves, making ourselves other.