11 December 2007

Honey Talks Expo at Fanzinotheque (Poitiers)

Fanzinothèque de Poitiers has been around for twenty amazing years. Their huge fanzine library and small press distribution are focused on French comics and silk-screened fanzines although, for those who care to dig, the archives include a whole lot of music zines, perzines, political magazines,... even obscure publications with strange names like, for instance, Stripburger.

Currently, the Fanzinothèque is hosting Honey Talks, the exhibition of comics inspired by painted beehive panels, and a solo exhibition of scrathboards and paintings by Matthias Lehmann. Matthias also made the poster for both exhibitions.








Here are some photos from Stripburger’s stay in Poitiers...



Creative death of Belgian and North-American superheroes at the Fanzino office.






Cecile, Mirko, Marie, Guinot, hmm, somebody else and Christel preparing the Honey Talks buffet....


...and the buffet in its full glory.




The Expo





Matthias and Gašper painting a local bee-keeper's beehive



The beehive-painting and scratchboard workshops







Stripburger #46 - Laugh out Loud!

Stripburger #46 came out a while ago, in the fist days of October, but since we 'forgot' to mention it on this blog on time, this is not exactly news anymore. Lets call it olds, then.

The Laugh Out Loud! special feature was prepared in collaboration with City of Women, the Ljubljana-based 13th International Festival of Contemporary Arts. Stripburger’s call for submissions Laugh Out Loud! addressed female comic artists only.

Why? Because independent comics production tends to favor only two kinds of laughter and one kind of gender. Since parody and satirical laughter of many male comic artists became an unquestioned standard of critical or even subversive thought, the basic question “why are there no female cartoonists” was inevitably followed by others: we wanted to detect the line between subversive and reactionary laughter, we were curious about all the possible ways one can laugh on fifty feature pages, we were bold enough to wonder about reasons for the existence of so many kinds of humor and found out that yes, the variety includes the gender difference as well. The submitted comics reminded us how funny it is to see us burst out laughing only to realize later we weren’t laughing at the same thing...

Contributors:
Andreja Kladnik, Saša Kerkoš (Slovenia), Maja Veselinović (Srbia), Anna Ehrlemark (Sweden/Slovenia), Malin Biller, Karolina Bång (Sweden), Ludmilla Bartscht, Claire Lenkova, Ulli Lust (Germany), Kati Kovács (Finland), Chiquinha! (Brasil), Dora Dutkova (Czech Republic), Cinders McLeod (Canada), Roberta Gregory, Fly, Mary Fleener (USA) and Dunja Janković (Croatia/USA) who also contributed the cover and answered annoying questions about women, feminism, comics and work. Other featured artists in Stripburger #46 are: Kati Rapia (Finland), Laurent Dandoy (Belgium), Jakob Klemenčič and Matej Kocjan - Koco (Slovenia).