Disarticulating Authorship: Vicky Smith’s Direct Animations

Why has the figure of the embodied author returned as a solid anchor of meaning at this historical moment? While the author and the work of art have long been destabilized within the humanities and social sciences, the category of authorship, and with it the artist’s body, has remained a remarkably stable point of reference within experimental film scholarship. In this essay, I examine four abstract cameraless films by British artist Vicky Smith—Noisy Licking, Spitting & Dribbling (2014), sobbingspittingscratching (2012), 33 frames per foot (2013), and Not (a)part (2019)—in relation to questions about the current status of embodied authorship and the medium of analogue film. Many of Smith’s films start with embodied performances, which expose not only her physical labour and means of production, but also the specificity and vulnerability of her body and materials. Smith’s work and writing invite us to consider the uneasy imbrication of authorship, embodiment, and analogue film as anchors of meaning at the present historical moment.