Futures
of Comics

Futures of Comics is an international, non-academic research programme mapping the social, economic and gendered forces that shape contemporary comics.

Dates
2019-ongoing
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Type
Workshops, Talks, Library Displays
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Website
futuresofcomics.org

The programme’s method is conversational and public. Through a rolling series of talks, conferences, and convenings with actors across the field, Futures of Comics maps the social, economic, and gendered forces that shape the industry — the conditions under which comics are commissioned, made, distributed, paid for, read, and circulated. The programme is interested in the relationships between authors, readers, publishers, and the wider book economy, and in the production routines and contractual arrangements that the more visible end of comics scholarship tends to overlook. By orienting the programme toward practitioners outside academic comics studies, Futures of Comics also functions as a platform for contemporary artists whose work uses comics as a research instrument in its own right.

Past Events

Keith Tilford (USA)

On Artifactual Imagination
In this talk, Keith Tilford considers imagination in the context of generative AI as a lens through which to examine the evolutionary embedding of cognition in hybrid thinking systems more broadly. Drawing on evidence from art history, archaeological and cognitive-scientific research, and the anthropology of technology, he argues that the cognitive architecture of imagination is not merely expressed through artifacts and technical lineages, but is itself an artifact of technical practices and their cultural transmission — one coextensive with a reorganization of the imaginative function within a new technical apparatus. A central claim is that, since early modern Europe, this distributed technical character has been progressively encrypted through a concept of imagination and its productive capacities that serves to insulate creativity and forms of liberal subjectivity from scrutiny and historical accountability. The contemporary antagonism toward generative AI, positioned as a radical threat to human creativity, is treated here as an ideological symptom that presupposes exactly this framing of subjectivity. Keith will also briefly present a current synthetic comics project using a trained LoRA model over SDXL that operationalizes and tests these claims.

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Joe Kessler (UK)

Joe Kessler is a cartoonist who lives and works in London. He is the author of Windowpane and The Gull Yettin and is a founder and Art Director of Breakdown Press.

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Samplerman (FR)

Yvan Guillo, aka Yvang, aka Samplerman is a French cartoonist/collagist born in 1971. He started publishing his comics in numerous fanzines in the early nineties and took part in micro published collective projects. Around 2009, he started a shared Tumblr blog “zdnd”, la zone de non-droit (the no-go zone) in order to show some side projects. The digital collages of forgotten and public domain american comics labelled “Samplerman” started there, with continous commissions for comics, illustrations, Sleeves for LP Record from many countries. Samplerman was awarded the Prix de l’EESI in 2019 during the Angoulême festival. He’s currently working on several forthcoming exhibitions, books and mini comics. He lives and works in Brittany, France. Some of his books are Miscomocs Comics, Fearless Colors, Bad Ball and Anatomie Narrative.

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Matrijarsija (SRB)

Represented by Paloma Luz Diaz, Matrijaršija (pronounced: mah-tree-yar-shee-ya) is currently a patchwork of various individual and collective living art phenomena from Belgrade, Serbia, the region and the whole of Europe. During its nine years of existence it had become a center of congregation for various authors who joined its non-structured network, as well as acknowledging and encouraging particular existential and working practices, which more and more are coalescing into a specific type of custodianship and preservation of the semi-public status of this type of art and the thriving network in which it exists. The creative output of Matrijaršija is dedicated to recognizing the codes of social roles and structures, in order to allow for their recombination (art and exhibition practices combined with turbo-folk music; urban, intellectual art combined with other fringe territories – music, politics, the media world, the politics and religion of the media world).

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Jean Guichon (BE)

Children of the sun, disciples of Baal, the sixteen apostles of Jean Guichon spread the good word with the fervor of a venereal disease. Known for having corrupted all drinking water with KKNRVX, they have since given birth to the monthly publication “Le Loyer” with the regularity of a drunken clock and the talent of a sleeping cat. Since then, they continue to play Indians in space-time, chasing a mad comet.

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Daniela Zuluaga (CO)

Daniela Zuluaga is a writer and an alternative publisher from Colombia. She is a member of Casa Barullo, which is a zine collective that plays around with the idea of a house made of stories. Currently, she is studying cultural management at the Universitat de Barcelona. She loves how fanzines and other kinds of self-made or artisanal publications are powerful tools for connecting creators among them and with their reading community. She believes that these practices are critical and constitute an alternative to mass-production publishing.

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Malina Suliman (AFG)

Malina Suliman, a graffiti artist, metalworker, and painter, was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1990. As a child, she and her family were forced to flee her home province to live in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Her work is considered to challenge traditional Muslim culture like the burqa. According to Suliman, “The burqa is a way of controlling, but in the name of respect. Every culture or religion gives a different name for the burqa. It is honor, culture, and religion. Really, it just controls the woman and keeps her inside.” Malina’s work has gained the attention of the Taliban and traditional Muslims, resulting in having received threats from the Taliban towards Suliman and her family. The artist was subject to physical threats, rocks have been thrown at her as she conducts her work. Not only does Malina worry about the Taliban, but her family who disagrees with her decision to create art. Creating art that displays the human body like Malina’s motif, the skeleton in a burqa, is seen as idol worship. To the Taliban and other traditional Muslims, Malina’s artwork is un-Islamic and Suliman’s parents were embarrassed. Suliman spends her time holding art exhibits around the world.

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Nicolas Nova (FR)

Enquête & Création, Enquête/Création
Surveying, observing and investigating different phenomena, territories and practices involves both exploring these fields and restoring their nuances. This is why formatting operations are fundamental, playing on different types of writing, from textual documentary narratives to illustrated books. At the crossroads of the human and social sciences, artistic practices and the natural sciences, Nicolas’ work is based on multiple forms of investigation/creation, which he will discuss with Ilan Manouach.

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Jochen Gerner (FR)

Relectures
For over twenty years, my research in drawing and storytelling has explored the potential richness of printed graphic media, whether from the world of comics or independent images from a variety of sources. In 2001, while studying the violent, repetitive textual corpus of the comic strip Tintin in America (Hergé, 1932), I realized that it was possible to analyze a work through drawing. This work could be read on two different scales: that of the book and that of the exhibition, with visual, narrative or panoramic perceptions. Later, I discovered that this principle of reflection through drawing could be applied to other projects, in different graphic forms (visual ping pong, detail drawings, iconographic directories, etc.).

25

Anne-Francoise Rouche (BE)

Knock outsider – vers un troisième langage
Knock Outsider is a project initiated in 2007 by the contemporary outsider art center La “S” Grand Atelier (B) and Éditions Frémok (B) to experiment, publish and promote mixed-media experiments in the field of comics and narrative images. This partnership gave birth to an editorial collection entitled Knock Outsider, which took off in 2019 to become an autonomous platform focused primarily on outsider art, but also on its porosity with contemporary art. Knock Outsider promotes a spirit of openness and decompartmentalization through the publication of works and the production of exhibitions and other events in the service of creators and its editorial values. Knock Outsider brings together publishing specialists and enthusiasts. Each works in his or her own speciality, in a spirit of community, reflection and professionalism, to ensure exemplary production quality.

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Josh O’Neill (USA)

Comics are a Problem
The creative challenge presented by comics does not begin or end at the drawing table. How does new work find a readership? What makes for a sustainable art practice? How do financial pressures and challenges drive aesthetic decisions, and vice versa? Join publisher and author Josh O’Neill, co-founder of the publishing collectives Locust Moon and Beehive Books, for a group discussion of small press economics, experimental methods of comics production and distribution, and the communities that create — and are created by — comic books.

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Kim Jooha (KR)

On Trans/National Comics: the Canadian Case
National Comics is one of the main frames of analysis in comics… or is it too old-fashioned now that the ‘transnational’ is trending? We will discuss the upsides and limitations of the concept of national comics in the case of Canada, an officially multicultural and bilingual country in constant search of national identity: Does Canadian Comics matter? What is national comics? Most popular comics? Best comics? What about immigrants and emigrants? What are the roles of institutions?

22

Aarthi Parthasarathy (IN)

Introduction to Indian Comics
Comics in India are being treated as cheap objects. People feel they have no inherent value, and are often discarded. Through a documentation of different raddiwalas (paper recyclers) who sort through the pile of books and magazines they get and rescue comics from there, Aarthi will talk about books that are representative of different points in the comics jouney of India: from the Pattachitra and Kaavad, to Indrajal Comics, to Amar Chitra Katha, to Tinkle Comics to graphic novels and finally zines. One of the books she will have with her is a rescued comic!

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Francesc Ruiz (ES)

How to Completely Vanish from Earth?
An experimental workshop on comics distribution. The workshop arises from the need to think radically about the distribution of any cultural material and in particular of comics from a negative perspective. Through different exercises we will create a protocol for massive elimination of all comics worldwide. Later we will identify spaces of resistance where comics could survive under extreme adverse conditions.

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Dusan Barok (SK)

Making and sharing comics libraries
In an age where public libraries are an endangered institution, collections run by amateur librarians emerge as new, vital topographies of sharing. Confronted with an unprecedented amount of texts and images, contemporary comics artists are consistently expected to challenge conventional notions of creativity and authorship by engaging with archival research, appropriation, iterative and sampling techniques and other practices of mediation. This workshop proposes to familiarize ourselves with basic wiki tools and reflect on archival practices that have thrived with the advent of digital and internet technologies. What are the possible ways and the best practices for constitutions of non-hegemonic archives that equally embrace the real, the unclaimed, the anticipated and the fictional? And how we can collectively organize our hoarding, taxonomic drives towards an active exploration of the digital library’s conceptual consistency and its ethics of digital preservation? The workshop aims in the collective production and distribution of an ad-hoc (thematic, medial, historical or not) archive of comics or the augmentation of an already existing one.

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Benoit Crucifix (BE)

“A Xerox of a Xerox a Xerox” – Archival Gestures of Comics Memory
How do comics save themselves? What are the modes of knowledge production and cultural transmission that shape the past of comics? Which means organize the inscription of comics in a longer temporal perspective? Futures of comics inevitably depend on the way they have been saved and preserved. While contemporary comics face new challenges in terms of their archival storage and distribution, within the large spectrum of a digital economy, the 1970s already grappled with related issues of reproduction technologies, access and circulation, storage and materiality. This talk will look at comics collecting less as a subcultural phenomenon than as an important episode in a larger history of Xeroxing, microfilm, public access, cultural policy, dematerialization, underground distribution — a narrative that is still largely ongoing in the digital context of whistleblowers and rogue archivists.

18

Morvandiau (FR)

Smuggling; many gestures, one single process?
As part of his thesis research entitled The Art of Smuggling? a cartography of the francophone alternative comics (1990-2015), Morvandiau found that many art workers of similar affinities have consistently multiplied their practices within the field of comics and publishing. How should we understand the claim for an expanded set of functions and capacities other than as a seeking a professional status, responding to multiple, often conflicting necessities such as the developments of a taste, a strategy and a process? From the trial and error experimentation to the perpetuation of outstanding printed works, the professional polymorphism in comics might be, along with the arrival of the manga in Europe, the major editorial upheaval of the last 30 years.

17

Alexandra Zsigmond (USA)

The Art of the News
The talk will be sourced from different interviews and discussions conducted with New York based professionals working in journalism and art direction and it will be structured as an examination of the Futures of Comics and the role of visual storytelling in The New York Times and other American newspapers and magazines.

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Powerpaola (CO)

Talking with others
For two hours we will start a dialogue with the other through drawings and texts. We will make a small fanzine that could be easy to copy and make an exchange with others. It’s very interesting how the other person reacts and how we build the topics and subjects to talk about. Everything matters. We could use basic things as pencils, paper, cutter and a ruler.

15

Un Faulduo (AR)

Against Comics
At first, Un Faulduo was a magazine. Then it became a world, the Faulduoworld. Now, it’s a magazine, a world and a group, which, for fifteen years, has tried to elucidate what’s the border of that strange language called comics. Un Faulduo makes comics, that is, some drawings framed by panels with some texts with words and onomatopoeia. But let’s play a game: let’s pretend that none of this exists. That there are no panels, no balloons, no words, no pictures. Let’s erase everything and paint -like Rauschenberg or Debord- the remains. Let’s assume that the only thing left standing is language, howling or silence. There are not, nor were there, manifestos to explain us, to help us. Only, perhaps, the arrogance of work. We are there, in the gutters, against comics. But how to oppose to something that does not yet exist?

14

Baris Uygur (T)

Censorship in Turkish Comics
The presentation will lay out the historical background of censorship towards Turkish comic magazines (Girgir, Mikrop, Limon, Leman, Pismis Kelle, Penguen, and Uykusuz) from the early 70’s. I will start with the Ottoman Empire and the late 19th century when the first humour magazines have been published, and continue with the early republican period when the humour magazines become propaganda apparatus rather than providing criticism. I will support the presentation with examples from magazines and my main focus point will be the 80s and 90s and today. After the presentation we can have a discussion session in which we can compare different practices in different countries.

13

Michael Fikaris (AU)

‘Communication Invoices’ Australian small press comic art anthologies and what they say of the times they were made
Dense but affordable, self-published comic anthologies sparked an explosion of limited-edition releases from Melbourne, Australia’s innovative underground comic artists in the late 1990’s-2000’s. Generally produced in runs anywhere from 20-1000 copies, these booklets often featured dedicated comic studies alongside friends and casual participants to the comic book lifestyle. These artefacts, aesthetics, and printed attitudes were often made solely to conspire a larger understanding of the people around them. Australia is well known as a colony and outdoorsy culture with sports, beaches, barbecues and entrepreneurs ruling the cultural expectations. So what about the comics? Researched and curated by Michael Fikaris, editor and publisher of Silent Army Comic Art Collective, this presentation on self published comic anthologies brings together a selection of releases from the 1990’s to today, alongside the developments and outcomes of small press comic technology. Drawing from the private collections of Fikaris, the anthologies explore the intersection between illustration, storytelling and design in the radical margins of Australian culture.

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Laura Caraballo (AR)

Neologism creation / microedition
This workshop will happen at two different times. The first part is a collective reflection based on elements such as: the critical analysis of hegemonic feminism, the definition of post-colonial feminism, as well as the problematization of the notions of binary and identity. I will propose some theoretical baselines around these concepts and the phenomena that materializes them. The second part will consist of a collective creation of neologisms or images that can report on the proposed problematics. This reflection and creation will result in the realization of a collective fanzine that will serve as a “manifesto” or, why not, an “anti-manifesto” of the work done during the workshop. The intention is not to pursue total agreement among the participants. The potential dissent will determine the richness of this limited moment of collective work.

11

Cartoonists Against Amazon (USA)

An Open Letter To Comics Festivals
Cartoonists Against Amazon will read “An Open Letter To Comics Festivals.” The group will additionally discuss the reasoning, context and strategy behind writing the letter, other ways in which cartoonists can work in solidarity with labour and migrant justice movements, and the networks of dissent being forged between comics and anti-Amazon organizing in other mediums, including No Music For ICE.

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Kim Jooha (KR)

Feminist Critiques of Comics Histor(iograph)y
Sadly, comics have a longstanding tradition of sexism. Primarily focusing on North American / Canadian comics, we will discuss how sexism has affected the writing of the history of comics (erasing women) and the lack of historiographical discussion in comics. We will also see how contemporary creators (including men), publishers, and readers reflect the rise of feminism (including sexuality) in recent years. Discussed works by Julie Doucet; Carel Moiseiwitch; Fiona Smyth; Jillian Tamaki; Ginette Lapalme; Hue; Jessica Campbell; Aaron Manzyck; Eric Kostiuk Williams; Eli Howey; Victor Martins; Tings Chak.

09

Aarthi Parthasarathy (IN)

Gendered Representations in Comics
The workshop on gender and comics is basically to take people through different images that Aarthi has collected for her research project and at each image, stop to have a discussion, as well as a visual/written reaction. We could engage in detail with each piece of representation, and have a conversation about it. Then we would either note down our observations on context, character, creator to understand why that image exists in that way, or re-imagine/ re-write that image.

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Kim Jooha (KR)

Collage & Comics: From Source to the Subject
Comics’ entry to the fine art world was the source of the appropriation art (Lichtenstein). But now many comic artists deploy the method of appropriation includes collage. There are exciting similarities of heterogeneity and methodology that collage and comics share, especially with the development of photo editing software. We will discuss collage works of comic artists; comics employing collage; comics influenced by collage; collage as comics; and comics as collage. Discussed works by Julie Doucet; Marc Bell; Michael Comeau; Kendra Yee; Hue; Patrick Kyle; Tings Chak; Ginette Lapalme.

07

Hippolyte Hentgen (FR)

A book presentation of Imagier
Imagier is the duo’s new monographic book that presents drawings, collages images made in recent years. While historically, the Imagier is someone who produces images of all kinds, both murals or on all supports, stained glass, sculptures, or “images” in the modern sense, that is to say representations of various themes, reproduced by engraving and printing techniques, in our case, the word only designates the object: a collection of printed images. The texts of the three authors, Claire Gillman, Jad Fair and Tony Côme, sequence our flow of images and allow us to speak out on the questions that have driven our practice of drawing for almost twenty years. Imagier is co-edited by the Art Center Le Lait which presented our personal exhibition Ficus in 2021 and the artothèque de Caen which presented our personal exhibition Femme pratique in 2022.

06

David Desrimais (FR)

AI, machines, works without an identified author: new editorial perspectives?
Nothing is less sure ! From the experience of JBE Books in researching the most contemporary books (in the sense of a codex, object and secular vehicle, design icon for 2000 years), we will try to identify the joys and misfortunes of the publication of works created under the impetus of mutating technologies. Immerse ourselves in the flow, renew our production methods, seize new forms, naturally. But what about the reader? Should they be burdened with every evolution, every step of this journey? What can the book do to shed light on this accelerated present in the light of the future?

05

Dominique Goblet (BE)

From comics to painting through poetry
At the crossroads of genres, comics is a three-story narrative bus; text – image – combination. Long reduced to an object of entertaining consumption, the medium becomes a playground and experimental laboratory and the purpose is no longer necessarily the book object. The codes are questioned, dismantled, unbolted or… used against time, against the current, in opposing or complementary spaces; the visual and poetic stakes penetrate the story of comic strips, while the codes specific to comic strips migrate into the exhibition spaces. It will therefore be a question, in this meeting between Ilan Manouach and Dominique Goblet, of floating borders and porosity between artistic fields and their narrative potential.

04

Merieme Mesfioui (MO)

Narrating intimacy through cartography
Through her fanzines, Merieme Mesfioui is looking for new formal strategies to tell stories, to denounce. Cartography takes more and more place in his way of understanding the narration. Indeed, this tool is about establishing a visual dialogue to break this distance between individuals, and thus question our conception and perception of certain spaces. Mapping space allows it to become communicative, alive to transmit information about ourselves, our characters, better identify them, understand them, and offer them real depth. In discussion with Valerio Bindi.

03

Patrice Killoffer (FR)

Desynchronicity
FAILED AGAIN! I have no idea what the Futures of Comics will or could be like. And I’m not sure I want to. The exercise inevitably misses its target… But precisely: why say something if it’s not for the sake of being wrong? At most, I can make some assumptions… Less than hypotheses: some desires, some intuitions. Desires that will inevitably turn around my concerns: the consistency of the fictional character and the narrator, which are often the same entity in my work. The couple reality/fiction. The border that separates and connects the letter to the image. Humor and poetry as a vehicle for any raw material.

02

Franck Leibovici (FR)

Transparency & Opacity
Franck Leibovici comes from poetry, Ilan Manouach comes from comics: two different artistic backgrounds, with their own histories and signifying potentials. Comics is considered a vernacular form of cultural expression, while poetry is usually perceived as a hermetic, if not elitist activity open to the very few initiated ones. Through notions of opacity and transparency, Manouach and Leibovici will discuss about the ethical and aesthetic considerations of giving the reader access to the protocols of a work and the ways of doing things, and will question how their respective backgrounds makes them face specific resistances in their medium but also allows them to think differently about established notions, and best practices in their relation with their audience and readership.

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