Expanding upon notions of anti-animation set forth by experimental practitioners like Paul Sharits and Robert Breer, the studies in this program apply formal principles of abstract cinema while pursuing an interest in found materials, evolving modes of production, and forms of labor. Questioning the role of decoration in daily life, the films extend the temporal concerns of the structural film while calling for a critical formalism. These films refute abstraction by reflexively activating the referential properties of objects, foregrounding questions of Romanticism surrounding metaphor and exchanging lyrical and mythopoeic modes for those of economic observation. In Persian Pickles, a  swimming study of paisley patterns traces this motif from its origins in Persian weavings to appearances in Irish quilting and American counterculture. The ongoing Blanket Statement series uses quilts to evoke issues of domestic security, citing appearances of quilts in the fine arts from Michelangelo Pistoletto to Beryl Korot. Point de Gaze and Razzle Dazzle feature handmade and machine-produced laces, tattings, and intricate weavings to meditate upon the industry of desire and the phenomenology of cinema.

Using domestic and recycled materials, the program illuminates formal and cursory elements shared between fine-art abstraction and mass-produced graphic design. Questioning the role of decoration in daily life, these works unleash the kinetic energy of overlooked and wasted objects.

Jodie Mack (b. 1983) is an experimental animator who received her MFA in film, video, and new media from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Her 16mm films screen regularly at venues across the globe—in both solo shows and as part of festival programs. She currently works as an Associate Professor of Animation at Dartmouth College, where she co-organizes an experimental media series, EYEWASH. She is a 2017/18 Film Study Center Fellow and Roberta and David Logie Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.