Textile & Animation Theory: who needs it?

Animation Evolution Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland
co-presentation with Dr Jonathan Murray

This paper considers the development of critical writing about textiles and animation as disciplines that share a common feature of residing in the shadow of disciplines (fashion and film) with established histories of critical writing and theorisation. The pressure for textile theory to ‘borrow’ or ‘make do’ with scraps of fashion theory it can appropriate does a disservice to unique and particular aspects that could benefit from development within textile writing. This paper will attempt a comparison with the field of animation in the hope that new approaches to critical inquiry can be discovered. It will consider how disciplines that use craft-based techniques benefit from critical writing. In particular, the role of fiction will be explored as an alternative tool for critical writing that may prove useful for both textiles and animation.