Aaron here today with Comic Arts Tyumen; Lianhuanhua; Dorothy Iannone; Liana Finck; Pénélope Bagieu; The World of Airships
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Georgy Eleav is a current student of Frank Santoro’s Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers, and one of the primary organizers of the first ever Russian alternative comics festivals. This new festival – Comic Arts Tyumen – will take place in Tyumen City, in western Siberia, at the end of March. Georgy told us:
“…we are focusing on small press, zines, indie comics scene and underground authors who are working far away from capitals. We are glad to announce that, with support from Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation, our special guests will be Anna Vaivare and David Schilter from kuš! – Anna is going to put a workshop for young local cartoonists, and David will tell about Latvian comics scene. Also we are very grateful to Breakdown Press team – they were unable to make such a long trip this time, but supplied us with a huge variety of their books to present. Our festival is also supported by Russian alternative comics publishers Boomkniga and Comfederation – they will bring indie authors to make signings, more workshops and public discussions about the current state of comics in Russia, women and comics, and the future of the scene. Local Siberian cartoonists will present an exhibition of alternative comics art and also will present themselves at huge comics & zine fair. And to sum it up, the entrance is free for everyone!
Also, the event is hosted by Space Cow comicbook store and small press company (which I own) and funded and hugely supported by the local cartoonists and zinemakers community – and inspired, of course, by Gabe Fowler’s Comic Arts Brooklyn festival, Comics Workbook reports and researchings, Josh M. Bayer’s interview for Russian readers, and Copacetic Comics Company’s wide variety of all kinds of graphic literature!“
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Migraine by Woshibai and Two Stories by Gantea
Greg Hunter on 2 recent books from Paradise Systems:
The effect of these sequences is alienating yet compelling. Woshibai’s narrator provides a litany of personal details, and even so, some readers might find the gulf between themselves and the cartoonist growing as the comic advances. Woshibai maintains this separation in part by depicting his adult and younger selves with blank, featureless faces. It’s the central gesture of a cold but memorable piece. Migraine leaves readers with some grim conclusions about the reliability of a person’s self-concept, never mind the challenge of sharing it with other people. Memory and memoir both can only help us so much.
Two Stories, meanwhile, is less likely to stir up existential dread. Gantea has a cute aesthetic, giving her figures round heads, feet like dinner rolls, and hands like oven mitts. A reader might imagine either of the book’s pieces going viral. In addition to the cute factor, they’re quick, easy reads in basic visual-literacy terms, and they have animals too. But the net effect of these stories is something more proximal to cute; the comics aren’t Trojan horses exactly, but they’re agreeably strange at times.
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Dorothy Iannone: I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door
In NYC, through March 2019
For the High Line, Iannone creates a new, large-scale mural installation at 22nd St. Iannone’s mural features three colorful Statues of Liberty. Between them runs the words, “I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door,” which is the final line from Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus,” the ode to the freedom promised by immigration to America engraved on a bronze plaque mounted inside the statue at Liberty Island. Iannone’s piece was conceived before the recent months of upheaval in the United States around immigration, an already contested topic; these recent debates have raised the Statue of Liberty anew as a symbol of the openness of New York City and the United States to those seeking asylum, freedom, or simply a better life. Iannone’s vibrant Liberties bring a bit of joy to an often exhausting and demoralizing political debate.
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Review of ‘The Real Life of Sebastian Knight’
Liana Finck on the Vladimir Nabokov book at the NY Times:
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Pénélope Bagieu Comics
At The Paris Review:
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“Military School“, an animatic video made in response to the phallic death culture surrounding school shootings, the “soft civil war” hastened by the current administration, promoted by the encouragement of schools as battlefields, N.R.A. and other Death-merchant-encouraged arming of teachers and other civilians, capitalist promotion of final-gunshot-to-the-forehead imagery as plot resolution in films…with a detour into a Christian charity shop…
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VISION BOX — CAMERON ARTHUR — 03/13/2018
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Joanie and Jordie – 3-13-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio