help us produce the animated essays...
Hi! We’re Aron, Mina & M. from just wondering…
First of all, thank you for considering supporting us! We know just how many things need support right now, and are very grateful.
We, at just wondering…, have been working on making animated essays since 2016, aiming to put forward critical narratives and make academic knowledge more accessible. Increasingly, we’ve become focused on social and environmental justice issues, antispeciesism, posthumanism and total liberation politics.
We’re three close friends from Eastern Europe (Romania), each with their own curiosities and expertise, working together to produce these videos. We’ve grown and learned a lot in these years, as well as worked countless hours on this project and collaborated with absolutely amazing writers and artists. Our short film “we fly, we crawl, we swim” got awarded at numerous film festivals and a few of our animated essays have been shown in art galleries and exhibitions.
Support us monthly
so we can create more!
Boost our work
with a one time donation!
so why do we need your support?
Making these animated essays is exciting, but also challenging. Almost every video we make takes hundreds of hours, from concept to research to writing, editing, recording, illustrating, animating, composing, and post-production, lastly making everything work together. Some animated essays can take a month or two to make, but other, more complex projects, can take more than half a year, like our short film did.
We’re very dedicated to doing this work and really believe in the power of audiovisual storytelling to get across critical ideas. In time, our films have gotten more specific, but we believe they are also stronger that way.
Your support would mean that we can keep doing this work without looking for more stable, and more boring, jobs. So thank you, a million times.
how often do we publish an animated essay?
Well, wouldn’t we want to know too! It really depends on the project. Some animated essays can take about a month or two to complete, other videos/films take six or more. Sometimes it’s harder, sometimes it’s easier, but we’ll keep you updated with what’s going on.
accessibility
All of our animated essays are open-access, published on our Youtube channel and on the website. They are primarily in English, and almost all of them are subtitled in English, Romanian, and a few other languages.
In the case of our animated essays from the playlist “dictionary of thinkers & concepts”, you can check their bibliography and read the full essay (video transcript) on our website too, where illustrations are also published with alt-text descriptions.
grants & fellowships...
In 2020 we applied for a grant at Culture & Animals Foundation. We received it for helping us make our short film "we fly, we crawl, we swim" which can now be viewed online.
In early 2021 we applied for The New New fellowship & our project was accepted! From late March to early September 2021, we have been included in the fellowship, looking forward to exploring and building inclusive digital futures.