Edwin Rostron – Edge of Frame

Lines Fiction: How did you start presenting animations and experimental film on your website:
Edge of Frame?

Edwin Rostron: When I started the original Edge of Frame blog in 2013 I had wanted to do something like it for a long time. I had been making my own animation work for about 15 years by that point, and experimental animation had always felt like quite a marginalised and niche area of practice. There weren’t many organisations, writers or curators specifically focused on it. I felt frustrated by the lack of visibility and discussion around the area (as that was the kind of work I was making myself) and felt a real need for more writing about it, and more screenings of it.

2013 felt like a good moment for me to start something up for various reasons. I had gained a bit of experience writing about film and animation through various jobs I’d had up to then. I had been making and showing work for a while so was already in contact with a number of other animators. And at that time there seemed to be more and more contemporary animators uploading their work to Vimeo, so it seemed like a good time to be able to see new work and share it online. (This was in the days when Vimeo was a much more functional and positive platform for independent filmmakers to be on than it is now, sadly!)

Lines Fiction: who do you address with your project Edge of Frame, and how did the project develop over time?

Edwin Rostron: Once I started the blog it became obvious there was a keen audience for it. I wanted it to be in-depth and useful as a resource – for artists, students, writers, curators – with something for people at all stages of understanding or experience. I also wanted it to be really accessible and not academic in the way it was written or presented. It has been used a lot by animation students but also cited in a number of academic papers and books about animation. And of course all kinds of different animators find a lot in it of interest too. I feel like these different ways it has been used means I have succeeded in creating something useful and accessible.

It has also put me in touch with lots of other animators all around the world. For me personally I think the sense of community it has generated has been the best thing about doing it. A few years after I started the blog I began putting Edge of Frame screenings on, and these became focal points for animators to gather and meet offline. Through running Edge of Frame I was asked to do some animation programming for other organisations and festivals such as Flatpack and London International Animation Festival, and I think it was a definite factor in my being asked to teach at the Royal College of Art too.

It has been a really positive experience but between 2016-18 I took on way too much too quickly – organising lots of screenings and events, writing the blog, continuing my own animation practice, teaching and also working another part time job. I kind of burnt out and had to scale back my Edge of Frame activities quite a bit. The good thing is that I have always felt the freedom to do it in exactly the way I wanted to at any given point, so when I have wanted to scale it back I have – and I even stopped it completely in 2022 for a year or so.

Last year I re-started the blog as a Substack and resumed programming Edge of Frame screenings for LIAF. I also started a new irregular screening event called ‘Collision’ which has had a really positive response. I have always done Edge of Frame entirely on my own terms, which is very important to me, as it is with my animation practice.

Lines Fiction: Moving images are indispensable in our digital life. Do you think that hand drawn animation and experimental film get a fare share of attention in the art world?

Edwin Rostron: On the whole I would say no. There never was that much attention given to artists’ animation work but I think it has got a lot worse in the last 10-15 years. in the UK a lot of the small or medium sized galleries or organisations who might once have supported or shown some experimental animation have closed down due to financial pressures. There are still some animators who make it into the gallery world – I recently wrote a review of Matt Bollinger’s show here in London which featured a wonderful animation work that could only really be shown in a gallery, alongside paintings, etchings and drawings. But he is a rarity, and I am not too sure if he would be getting shows like that without his paintings and prints. I can understand it from a commercial gallery’s point of view – artists who make films don’t bring in a lot of money for a gallery as films are very hard to sell! So I think having a multi-faceted, expanded animation practice puts you in a better position to be shown in galleries. But it’s harder than it’s ever been I think, though not completely impossible.

Lines Fiction: What are your thoughts on websites presenting free content, in contrast to subscription based offers?

Edwin Rostron: Edge of Frame was a free blog between 2013-2022. But over the years I became much busier and the blog invariably got pushed to the bottom the list of things I had to do. The time between posts got longer and longer and then in 2022 I stopped doing it altogether. At the end of 2024 I decided to start it up again but as a Substack with a partly-paid for subscription element. The only way I could really make the time for it was to have it generate some income.

I was always very happy for it to be free – of course I wanted it to be completely accessible to all – but now I do question that model a bit when I look at the wider societal / cultural consequences of a desire for unlimited ‘free content’. When I look at the damage Spotify has done to the music industry, the debasement of all forms of culture as a result of prioritising convenience so highly – I think we just end up paying in a much worse way. But I do have mixed feelings about it all of course.

Lines Fiction: I was thinking about AI – does it affect your work / do you use it / do you encounter AI driven work by other artists in your project?

Edwin Rostron: I don’t really have anything interesting to say about AI. I don’t use it in my work and don’t know any more about it than anyone else probably. The costs of its wider use en masse – to the environment, to society – seem really depressing and dangerous. As do the people and companies spearheading its use. Of course artists can use it in interesting ways – as they can with literally any tool – so I would look at any artist or work using AI on its own merits. But for me personally as an artist it’s of no interest at all. I think a pencil is more than enough to be going on with!