Sally Pearce

I propose to explore the agency of invisibility in my project ‘Chernobyl Journey’, (CJ) accommodating the complexity of my activities as an independent documentarian and animator by tracing invisibility as a rhizomatic/agential (Deleuze/Guattari,1987) (Barad, 2007) thread across the totality of my practice. I will incorporate material from the film into my talk, which will be between an academic paper and a video-essay. In leading this winding cross-disciplinary tour through my contextualised practice, I will not be trying to find closure. Instead I will raise questions – acknowledging entanglement with other thematic threads, indicating possible points of departure onto alternative discursive journeys, allowing complexity and avoiding reduction towards simplicity for the sake of argument. The form of my proposed talk is an experiment in exegesis, in allowing the nature of my PhD practice – where threads that enrich each other are ravelled together leading not to conclusions but to nuanced complexity – to lead my theoretical studies. Approaching my PhD by Practice thesis by tracing non-human agencies affecting my practice, that I do not control, but react to, or dance with (Manning, 2013), is not only an experiment in exegesis (Gale, 2018), but also offers an alternative vision of the artist and creativity. The specific agent ‘invisibility’ takes me on a journey that leads to animation as eco-activism – the power, flexibility and seduction of animation as an eco-critical tool for the Age of Clowns, but also the practical difficulties of animation as a labour intensive and often expensive process.

Sally Pearce is in the second year of a PhD by Practice based in the animation department at Wolverhampton University, making her film ‘Chernobyl Journey’, a mixed-media feature-length auto-ethnographic documentary, as the practice aspect of her research. She has a BA in Philosophy (Cambridge University), and a second BA in Fine Art (Sheffield Hallam University). She took her MA in Animation Direction at the National Film and TV School, UK, graduating in 2008. Her animated and mixed media films have screened in Festivals around the world and won many awards including a BAFTA. She has delivered academic papers in Istanbul, Nijmegen, Lisbon and the UK.