Ceiren Bell • THE FUTURE OF ANIMATION

Forgotten Women

These animations were produced as an experimental interdisciplinary collaboration with Dr Kat Jungnickel from the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, as part of her 'Bikes and Bloomers' project. Although very few photographs and no moving image footage existed of the early women bikers, Kat’s research has 'animated' the women inventors she writes about through the very faint traces the bikers had left via their patents, drawings and genealogical data. Ceiren Bell’s animation work directly utilised these and other materials to see how 'ghosts' from the past might be embedded in them, how they continue to engage with the present and how they might be realised and renegotiated through the animation process. As well as animating the bikers, the film outlines a trajectory for the practice of animation as, literally, a return to life.

Ceiren Bell is a Lecturer in Animation at Goldsmiths. In her practice she specialises in hand-drawn educational animations.