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Alla Gadassik: Media Scholar and Animation Curator

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Book Publication – “Interlaced: Animation & Textiles”

Celebrating the global launch of Interlaced: Animation and Textiles (2025), a lavishly illustrated print catalogue that documents and critically expands on the popular exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre. This book explores the relationship between animation and textiles across over a century of media art, from early cinema experiments to contemporary algorithmically generated images. Curator Alla Gadassik’s deeply researched text is accompanied by captivating exhibition photographs, high-quality reproductions of all artworks and additional archival materials, and a Director’s foreword.

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Book Publication – “Graphite: Animated Traces”

My short monograph Graphite: Animated Traces (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2024) profiles the material and cultural history of graphite as a creative medium, with close attention to its important role in contemporary art and animation.⁠ The book highlights the medium’s temperament and significance by turning to the unfolding and provisional status of the drawn moving image, considering graphite as a medium of emergent thought, contemplation, tender intimacy and impermanence.⁠

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Exhibition: “Interlaced: Animation and Textiles” (Dec. 7, 2024 – Apr. 27, 2025)

The culmination of my curatorial residency at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery | Len Lye Centre, this is the first major exhibition dedicated to the reciprocal relationship between animation and textile art. Transforming the centre into a series of gallery and cinema spaces, Interlaced: Animation and Textiles brings together moving-image works fashioned from textile forms and materials alongside fibre works inspired by animation. Artists featured in the exhibition explore ways of embroidering with projected light, quilting celluloid films, and weaving digital tapestries.

 ARTISTS:
Faig Ahmed (Azerbaijan), Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (UK), Jon Michael Corbett (Canada), Kelly Egan (Canada), Sione Faletau (Aotearoa, Tonga), Footprints Studio (UK), Sabrina Gschwandtner (USA), Marguerite Harris (France), Len Lye (Aotearoa), Aubrey Longley-Cook (USA), Jodie Mack (USA), Huw Messie (USA), Lindsay McIntyre (Canada), Miracle de Mille (France), Ng’endo Mukii (USA), Kate Nartker (USA), Ishu Patel (Canada), Pathé Studio (UK), Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof (Canada), Harry Smith (USA), Caitlin Thompson (Canada), Vaimaila Urale (Aotearoa, Samoa), Jennifer West (USA), Jordan Wong (USA), Shaheer Zazai (Canada), Studio Zeitguised (Germany)

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Public Event: Wendy Tilby / Amanda Forbis

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a day with animation duo Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, three-time Oscar nominees, whose film When the Day Breaks (1999) has been so formative for animators and animation scholars worldwide. Tilby and Forbis were guests of honour at the Cinematheque Vancouver, and I was invited to moderate a conversation with the two artists following their presentation and film screening.

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Publication: Trauma-Informed Research Ethics

Drawn image of two people walking in conversation with a caption that says "Move at the Speed of Trust"

In my role as Chair of the ECU Research Ethics Board for the past three years, I organize an annual educational event related to the ethics of creative research and practice. This year’s event featured a conversation with Dr. Charlotte Schallié from Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives about working with survivors of violent trauma and atrocity. While we do not record our events, I wrote a post covering some key points that came up in the conversation and audience discussion that followed. Dr. Schallié commissioned ECU student Hannah Strocel to develop illustrations for the text, and it’s now published on the SCVN website here.

“Signed in Ink” Screening and Talk at Kaboom 2026

Signed in Ink is a special programme I curated for the 2026 Kaboom Animation Festival in Amsterdam, in response to the festival’s theme of Human Touch. The programme presented eleven animated films that use ink to set words into motion. My introduction discussed ink’s ability to cross borders, slip beyond language, and remind us of the pleasures of writing.

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Press: CBC News Feature on Animation and Pixar

After years of giving interviews on animation-related journalism stories, I finally made it to primetime ☺️. I was recently featured on CBC News — The National broadcast (11-01-26) and online article — on the occasion of Toy Story‘s 30th anniversary. The story asks whether Pixar can recapture its early magic, and I weigh in on what made the studio’s first films so technically and culturally groundbreaking, how the barriers to entry in 3D animation have fundamentally shifted, and what that means for the future of the form. Read the story on CBC News.

Public Talk: “Adventures of Prince Achmed” (1926)

Lotte Reiniger’s Adventures of Prince Achmed turns one hundred this year, and I was grateful to introduce this astonishing film at a special screening at VIFF (03-01-26). Musicians Gordon Grdina and Hamin Honari provided live musical accompaniment to a packed theatre. Honari, an Iranian percussionist now based in Montreal, spoke with feeling about the role of art in sustaining a common human spirit and imagination against the violence of war.

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Public event: Research Ethics Board

Organized in my current role as Chair of the ECU-Research Ethics Board, this event is a conversation with Dr. Charlotte Schallié, co-director of the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives project. The conversation focuses on ethical considerations and protocols of arts-based research with trauma survivors. This hybrid event takes place 02-09-2026 at Emily Carr University (main Boardroom) and online 

“Ohhh, Canada… Joyce Wieland’s Erotic Citizenship” (exhibition review)

My review of the luscious exhibition Heart On: Joyce Wieland was published over the holidays in PUBLIC Journal online here. Below is a version of the review that includes my documentation of the exhibition.

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Public Talk: “Fantasia” and the Colours of Visual Music

I’m introducing this matinee screening of Walt Disney studio’s Fantasia (1940) at VIFF Theatre (Dec-14-2025) and moderating a post-screening discussion of the film. Looking forward to discussing this film in the context of Visual Music cinema, colour on screen, and feminized labour in the studio’s ink-and-paint department and animation at large .

Guest-Curating for Rarebit Early Animation Wiki

Nic Sammond, founder of Rarebit Early Animation Wiki, invited me to curate this month’s issue of new entries. The spotlight theme is a celebration of direct animation innovator Len Lye, whose birthday is in July. Rarebit now has a biographical entry on Len Lye and an entry on his film 𝘒𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘪𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘦. The topical link of the month spotlights the Len Lye Centre, which is also celebrating its tenth anniversary this month. The chosen resource of the month is a catalogue for Zelluloid, a landmark 2010 exhibition devoted to cameraless film that preceded the recent wave of interest in celluloid film. All entries were cowritten with Beatrice Moldoveneau, an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto holding a work-study position with Rarebit.

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