Creative Residency at UCA: Creative Writing students take note!

UCA to open Animation Archive for public workshops

UCA FARNHAM, Falkner Road, Farnham
September 22-26.
Entry: Free

The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Farnham is to open its Animation Archive to the public for a series of workshops, talks, screening and games.

Funded by UCA's Creative Residency initiative, the sessions will be led by Sonia Friel, a PhD researcher at Norwich University of Arts who specialises in the work of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay brothers.

Scheduled events include 'Wunderkammer,' where the archive will be investigated to creatively build an electronic collection of texts and images into a digital 'cabinet of curiosities,' 'Surrealist Games,' where the group will replicate a selection of games using materials from the Animation Archive, and a film screening of Jan Švankmajer's surrealist work, Surviving Life: Theory and Practice (2010).

Sonia has experience in utilising archives in both critical and creative contexts, having worked with the archive of the Czech-Slovak Surrealist Group, the Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague, BFI Special Collections, and the personal archive of the film producer Keith Griffiths.  This included documentation, categorisation and organisation of archival material.

Her doctoral research into the work of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay brothers considers a diverse range of material created by the artist-animators, from their most famous animations to virtually undocumented drawings, sculptures, games and ephemera.  Her research has benefited considerably from close contact with the contemporary Czech and Slovak surrealist group and with the producer Keith Griffiths and Sonia has recently completed a chapter on Griffiths for a forthcoming edited collection on the role of the producer within film and media, due to be published by Bloomsbury in July 2014.

The Animation Archives at UCA Farnham are home to a number of fascinating collections, including the works of Bob Godfrey, Britain's first Oscar winning animator.

To book a session, and for further details on times on when workshops are running, please email Rebekah Taylor at rtaylor8@ucreative.ac.uk