As a young person I associate freedom with ephemerality, and ephemerality with institutions. I am moving on Friday and the bulk of my belongings is the product of my recent performance establishing Gaze Books. The goal of Gaze Books is more or less congruent with the goal of this blog: to create structure for like-minded individuals to create ephemeral spaces with which others can participate and/or observe.
The primary function of the institution is to offer resources within a pre-defined structure. A secondary function, or perhaps a by-product, is to confer a certain degree of belonging/anonymity upon its inhabitants. The institution is structurally resiliant enough to allow for intimate, ephemeral, and anonymous spaces to exist within it without threatening its overall structure.
Comics 'open up' ephemeral spaces. Comics are experienced within a vectorized beginning/middle/end structure - the structure of life - experienced as an ever-moving present moment. The ganzfeld of comics lies in the disconnect between participation and observation, between the acting self and the reflexive, historicizing self. Comics exist as archives - a past that performs in the present, a present moment that moves through the past.
Comics are a plural word. Comics are not a medium, I feel, because they cannot be reduced to an essential form; comics are additive, not subtractive. Comics are a nomadic practice, a way of creating/experiencing that exists inbetween mediums and practices.
I identify with a decentralized group of creators whose narratives I experience in the present, in blog feeds, emails, and face to face interactions. The history of comics exists in the present, in the decentralized, and in the nomadic. At the same time comics history exists in the archive, the institution, the stacks of books. The past is the accumulation of resources that enables the present to exist, like the relationship of the parent to the child.
13 comments:
"an ever-moving present moment."
awesome.
"Comics exist as archives - a past that performs in the present, a present moment that moves through the past."
yes! time is rendered spatially so it becomes static.
"Comics are a nomadic practice, a way of creating/experiencing that exists inbetween mediums and practices."
Man, oh man.
mr. larmee raises many interesting points
they will surely become the subject of many brunch-time conversations in the years to come, between us.
alas, i wish mr. thomas de quincy had some say in the matters...
instead he is just a 'pawn in the game'
what the fuck is this
no worries, you guys are on the right track
what the fuck is this
I'm confused by the De Quincey cover... I actually just read that earlier this year. Not clear on the connection here.
I like the idea of comics as "nomadic practice". It sounds very Deleuzian. Comics as practice rather form opens up the concept quite a bit from the sharp divisions that always seem to be drawn in formal definitions.
...that should be "practice rather THAN form..."
Yeah, that's all really neat and cool sounding, but where is the love? Where is the motive? What are these things about, and why? What do we do in these spaces and why?
it just leaves me cold.
Translation: Comics are things that people can make, other people can read them, and at some point they can all talk about them.
@derik i'm borrowing language from nicholas bourriaud's 'radicant' which borrows from deleuze and guattari
"Bourriaud is talking a lot about time-as-space and space-as-time -- that artists can explore the past as if it were a place, and a place as if it were a different time. History as geography and geography as history."
momus
Score one for vague guesses about critical theory!
Thanks for the info/link.
jesus, i'm so glad someone on the internet uses this kind of language to talk about comics.
i mean, i'm not necessarily completely in agreement with you (though i very much approve of the way you conflate comics and history), but jesus
"The primary function of the institution is to offer resources within a pre-defined structure. A secondary function, or perhaps a by-product.."
La "funzione primaria" della maggior parte dei fumetti รจ di cancellare il mio Butthole. Maggio teoria vivere per sempre!
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