Inspirations, techniques and institutionality. Animation in Józef Robakowski’s experimental oeuvre

Abstract

Józef Robakowski’s cinematic oeuvre functions mainly as an experimental form of audiovisual art exhibited in gallery spaces. In his avant-garde activities this intermedia artist, associated with the Film Form Workshop, often used techniques of animated film, as is evidenced by the author’s textual analysis of the films: Market (1970), Test 1 (1971), Test II (1971), Dynamic Rectangle (1971), 22x (1971), Impulsator (2000), Impulsator VI (2001), Attention Light! (2004). The analysis focuses on the techniques used by Robakowski as well as his potential or explicit inspirations. Creating experimental animations, often in the spirit of “pure film”, the avant-gardist has been appropriated by other scholarly disciplines such as art history or new media. The aim of this article is to include Józef Robakowski in the discourse of film studies: to demonstrate his stance as an animator over the course of his artistic work to date, but above all to place him in the history of Polish animated film.

Keywords

• józef robakowski
• polish animated film
• experimental animation
• polish avant-garde
• film form workshop
• katarzyna kobro
• len lye
• norman mclaren