That the term stop motion is affixed to a technique for making moving pictures seems something of a contradiction; then again, the animation that results from stitching together still images has become so commonplace that the words read like a familiar trade name. The overlapping realities of this antiquated technology’s concurrent obsolescence and triumphal ubiquity are precisely what animate “The Dissolve,” another term naming a somewhat old-fashioned film technique and now the title of the eighth installment of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, cocurated by Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco.

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