Narrative According to Landscape Animation - Akira Arimochi
PANEL 1: GENEALOGIES OF ANIMATED FORM Tuesday, June 9th, 10:35-11:05
Narrative According to Landscape Animation
Akira Arimochi (Aichi University of the Arts)
In this presentation, I will discuss "landscape animation" – challenging works that place landscape at the very core of the piece. Landscape animation tends to be presented in the field of contemporary art, such as in museums and galleries, rather than at film festivals. Observing this trend, I must first define landscape animation, which is a challenge in itself. To date, much of animation has been created and critiqued through the depiction of character faces, proper nouns and gestures. Conversely, discourse regarding landscape animation that actively approaches the scenery is insufficient. Therefore, in the early stages of this research, I proposed the hypothesis that landscape depiction alone can tell a story, distinct from the portrayal of character movements. I will present two points as results of this validation: (a) Through a prolonged encounter with landscape, the animation artist imbues the topography (like New Topographics) with a transcendent intensity that triggers a profound release of nostalgia and catharsis, the generation of narratives within in the viewer's thoughts and memories through that effect; (b) There is potential for diverse landscape expressions in animation. Three examples used for validation follow: The Pure Necessity (David Claerbout, Belgium) transformed a Disney classic through a long-term, meticulous creative process that eliminated staging, exaggeration and humanity. Juxtaposed LAND (ALIMO, Saudi Arabia/Poland/Japan) merged the act of "reading text" – a daily habit of a researcher examining various literary materials like philosophy – with the act of "watching images," presenting a new form of fragmentary long-lasting. Such a Landscape (Dana Kavelina, Ukraine) is an animation created as a creative act to resurrect the dead. By capturing scenes of war she has faced for many years in the historical context, she poetically articulates a means to reflect on human society. By analysing and examining landscape animation in this way, we may find how “landscape” can transcend the conventional frameworks of animation culture to act as a key element for defining and evolving new perspectives. I expect them to have a transformative impact on the thinking surrounding the connection between human evolution and narrative in both anthropology and landscape studies.
Akira Arimochi, born in 1977 in Japan, is a Professor of the Aichi University of the Arts. He served as a visiting researcher at the Estonian Academy of Arts for two years starting in 2012, and in 2019 he obtained a PhD from the Tokyo University of the Arts. His research focuses on the history of animation and comparative art studies. To date, he has secured 11 competitive external grants for his research. In 2024, he presented his research on humour at Animafest Scanner XI. In 2025, he published the article "Is Priit Pärn a Surrealist?" in Animation Studies 2.0. Additionally, he curated a landscape-themed animation exhibition at an art gallery in Japan and organized and served as a speaker at two animation conferences during the 1st Aichi Nagoya International Animation Film Festival in 2025. His current research focuses on the narratology of landscape animation, and the history of surrealism and animation.