Becka Bee

NBD just kicking around Ottawa for a few days, seeing my students get their super-talented minds blown, chatting with folks I’ve only known for a minute*, and marvelling at the reminder that animation is always about possibility.

*A minute is all it takes to know in my bones these are my people. 🥰

A small hot pink post-it note is stuck to a blank lined page of a notebook. The post-it note has “K Will” written at the top of it in pencil. Each of the two letter Ls in “will” has a cursive-style looped upper half, and a straight horizontal bottom stroke, as if the bottom half were a printed capital L.

Me taking notes like this in meetings nowadays: ADHD? Or (peri-)menopause brain fog?

Academic pals: what’s the consensus on citing self-published Substack articles? I know mileage varies widely when it comes to veracity and good analysis… I suppose for citation purposes it’s effectively a blog, right?

Artist-researcher Yanqi Liang stands at a lectern on the right, next to a slide from her presentation that featured frames from her animation. The frames are each drawn and/or embroidered, showing drawn images of a pair of women’s hands in various poses with bergamot. In the foreground are the backs of two audience members sitting in the front row.

Dr. Katerina Athanasopoulou stands to the right next to her title slide of her presentation, “Sustaining Animation Through the Animator’s Body.” The slide features a photographic image of a computer screen with an abstracted hand in the centre. The backs of two audience members sitting in the front row can be seen in the foreground.

Giorgos Nikopoulos is standing on the stage of the lecture hall, wearing a theatrical mask. He is striking a pose with both arms out in front of him, resting his weight on his back leg, as if preparing to fight. His presentation slide shows photos illustrating other masks and Jacques Lecoq’s method of mask acting. The backs of two audience members sitting in the front row can be seen in the foreground.

Absolutely fantastic panel on embodied animation and ideas of embodiment with excellent presentations by Katerina Athanasopoulou, and Yangqi Liang
Giorgos Nikopoulos. Bonus points for all the practice-based research involved . #sas36 💅🏻👋🏻🎭

back on my bullshit #londoneye

De Wit (who has light skin, glasses, white hair and beard, blue button-down shirt, and suspenders and dark pants) stands in front of a projection of his first PowerPoint slide for his talk, Animation and Ecological Awareness. The slide has a detailed illustration of a tree. De Wit is holding a soft red cube containing a microphone. He is looking in the direction of the camera.

Academy award-winner Michaël Dudok de Wit just gave us some kind of mental restorative yoga animation master class and my brain hasn’t felt this great in ages. #sas36

Two close-up images of me, a white-haired middle-aged woman seriously chomping on a pain au chocolat in London in one photo and a Cornish pasty in Bristol in the other. Text box between the photo reads, “Currently in the UK, eating crispy doughy things.”

Do I always look like I’m rage-eating when it’s pastry?

Grace Han in front of the screen showing a slide explaining Gen AI machine learning basics.

3 Panelists sit to the left of the screen that shows an advert for an upcoming talk they are doing while they address questions at the Q&A

First #sas36 panel: Bad Animation (= So Good) @aurelievpetit.bsky.social @ghahahan.bsky.social and Jacqueline Ristola

POV wide-angle shot of a long meeting table where all seats are occupied and everyone seems to have a reasonable-looking lunch. But there are just two banana peels at the table directly in front of you.

When the Q&A gets too interesting and overlaps with a really necessary SIG meeting sometimes that means a two-banana lunch. #sas36

The Rosy Hue - Elephant & Castle

Update: London trip just got even better now that I’ve found a pub to watch the Lionesses take on France tonight ⚽️

Hi London! I’m in you to do some research and have some animation academic fun. Please be nice to me; I still get all the pence denominations mixed up.

Damn straight I’m watching @nsl.ca !

Tesla lost enough value today that it could have fully funded USAID for a year.

THANK YOU. I’ve been thinking about this all day (not the Chris Benoit part).

Movie still from But I’m a Cheerleader where Natasha Lyonne, wearing pink, is flanked by two boys in blue. They are sitting in a circle outside near some trees. She is clapping her hands, looking non-plussed into the camera as another character outside of the frame says “My mother got married in pants,” as the root cause for their queerness.

Almost forgot how sweet (and so very 90s indie) _But I’m a Cheerleader_ is.

A screen grab of Bruce Willis in Die Hard crawling through elevator pulleys with a machine gun and the caption, “Nothing says ‘Christmas’ like this complex examination of every single facet of patriarchal systems being scrutinized, sent up, and ultimately celebrated.”

A TNG scene. We're in the Enterprise conference room, where Picard is holding a meeting with Data, Troi, and Dr Crusher. Barclay is also there, for unknown reasons. Maybe he wandered into the meeting and just sat down, and everyone was too polite to mention it. That happened to me once. I was visiting an office location I didn't normally go to and I wasn't quite sure which conference room I was supposed to be in. I walked into one and sat down and it took me five minutes to realize I was in the wrong meeting. From the perspective of the people in that room, halfway through that meeting, a stranger walked in, sat next to the boss, took notes for five minutes, then walked out without saying a word.

At its heart, Star Trek is a utopian fantasy about a society so advanced that they are capable of holding productive meetings that last no longer than three minutes

#filmstudies #experimentalanimation #phdlife

Nine minutes in to watching the election results on tv and we already know it’s a PC Majority. Bless. #nspoli

Watching provincial election returns gives me the same cozy “we’re all fucked” vibes as the emergency post-hurricane disaster broadcasts do.

#nspoli #cdnpoli

Post your favorite Pokémon.
Wrong answers only.

Ok I no longer feel that bad about how much homework animating is for my students

Post a gif of your favorite comfort show

Love this!

Screen grab of an acceptance letter that reads: “Dear Becka Barker, On behalf of the 2025 Conference Program Committee for the Society for Cinema & Media Studies, I am pleased to inform you that your proposal was accepted. Congratulations! Title: ‘After What is Good’: Affinity Groups, Transformative Learning, and the Work of Helen Hill Presenter(s): Becka Barker”

Baby’s first #SCMS! Excited to present my reflections on my friend and mentor, experimental animation practices and transformative learning in Chicago next spring!

Who’s all going?
#SCMS25

#academicmom
#genalphason

Me: *editing essay on new materialism&collab film practices*

My teen: *shows me TikTok; punchline is it’s filmed by an inanimate object*

Me: lol funny bc I’m actually writing about the idea of objects having agency—

My teen: Mom, can you teach me about investing?

🤷🏻‍♀️