The Passing Time of Pastimes

Abstract

This autoethnography explores stop motion animation, a traditional, time-intensive means of granting motion to inanimate objects and drawings by individually arranging each frame. Though it can, pragmatically, be replaced by modern technology, it remains a distinct medium with a unique capacity for expressing a certain existential, and material humor. In the author’s use of the medium the process melds with the practice of procrastination, engaging with the conjunction of the passive and the active, when work is unjustified by a ‘productive’ result, and rendered valuable only by the process itself.