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Animation Thinks charts a fragmentary history of Chinese animation from the 1920s to the present. Focusing on animation's encounters with other art forms, including photography, painting, calligraphy, and porcelain, Panpan Yang examines contemporary Chinese animation trans-spatially, tracing how the meaning of Chinese animated works subtly shifts when moving between spaces such as the film industry and the contemporary art world. Ultimately, Yang argues that Chinese animation thinks time and space to a degree unimaginable in other media, offering an understanding of space that is neither completely graphic nor entirely photographic and an understanding of time as heterogeneous, disruptive, and surprising.
Panpan Yang is Assistant Professor in the arts and visual cultures of modern China at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
"Panpan Yang's superb new book offers a history of Chinese animation from the 1920s to the present through the prism of its energized, even passionate encounters with other art forms: from photography and painting to calligraphy and porcelain. Arguing that animation has powers to 'think' not vouchsafed to other mediums, Yang shows how space and time intersect vividly within the animated image. This evocative and meticulously researched study will be vital reading for anyone interested in art history, cinema, and media studies—and in how Chinese animation has the capacity to impact all these domains."—Margaret Hillenbrand, University of Oxford