Ligatura Pitching 2010

International Comics Culture Festival East Cover Pitchings

International Comics Culture Festival East Cover Pitchings

Pitchings International Comics Culture Festival ligatura 2010, Poznań, Poland © Tranzyt Foundation centrala Central Europe Comics Art © dtp gabinet.co.uk isbn : 978-83-930146-5-1 www.ligatura.eu www.centrala.org.pl www.fundacja-tranzyt.blogspot.com Print: Sowa-Druk na życzenie, www.sowadruk.pl, +48 22431-81-40 east cover

Contents

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• East cover Pitchings • The jury of EAST COVER Pitchings International Comics Culture Festival Ligatura 2010 • Catalogue of madmen • Cats and Nervolver • Dairy of my dreams • Electra – theatre comic • In the last penal colony • City Game • Mikropolis. Terra Incognita • Modistilatizzle • Ordinaries • The Mesiah Project • Quasimotions • Russian Avantgarde in comics – persons, stories, poems.

• The Story of Gardens • Tower • Why do you ask if you know already • Windmills

East cover Pitchings Is a series of meetings of central European artists with an international jury, which will judge projects of their comics.

The idea of those meeting is to promote the most interesting artist from our region. The meeting are short, 10-15 minutes long presentations of ideas for an album, series or a shorter comics form. The presentations may also be a mixed media presentation, a presentation of drafts or finished storyboards or a scenario.

Artists could apply to east cover Pitchings till January 12th, 2010.

Only 16 artists will be chosen among all the applications and invited to take part in the east cover Pitchings. Will be reimbursed for the costs of travel to Poznań and will have an accommodation during the ligatura the Comic Culture Festival. east cover Pitchings will be held from the 5th till the 6th February, 2010 in the seat of Eight Day Theatre .

Entrance only for accredited guests invited by the organizers.

The east cover – comics activity catalogue will be available during the ligatura the Comic Culture Festival. There you can find the profiles of all the invited artists. When the festival is finished, all the catalogues will be send out to organizers of comics’ festivals, publishers in Western Europe.

The

jury of EAST COVER Pitchings International Comics Culture Festival Ligatura 2010: Dr John A . Lent

Dr. John A. Lent has been teaching mass communications at the university/college level since 1960. He has held the title of professor since 1976. In 2000, he was Rogers Distinguished Professor of Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

He has been guest professor at Shanghai University, professor/advisor of Ph.D. students at the Animation School of the Communication University of China, and visiting professor at Jilin College of the Arts Animation School and Nanjing Financial & Economics University, also in China.

His publications include 70 books and monographs he has authored or edited, most dealing with Asian mass communications and the first on Asian broadcasting, newspapers, film, popular culture, cartooning, animation, and media bibliography. He also pioneered in the study of Caribbean mass communications. Dr. Lent has interviewed about 600 cartoonists on every continent, including in 18 AsiaOceania countries.

Dr. Lent is founder and editor of International Journal of Comic Art; he also edits Asian Cinema, and chairs the Asian Cinema Studies Society, the Asian Popular Culture Group of the Popular Culture Association, and the Comic Art Working Group of International Association for Media and Communication Research. He founded the latter two groups.

Since 2003, the International Comic Art Festival has sponsored the annual John A. Lent Scholarship Award to honor his services to the field; also, the Malaysia/ Singapore/Brunei Studies Group and Berita, both of which he founded in 1975-1976, established a scholarship in his name. He has also received the Lifetime award from amic in Singapore for his pioneering research on Asian mass communication, and the John

Buscema award for cartooning in Gijon, Spain.

He has served on animation and cartoon juries in about 15 countries; in 2007 and 2008, he was on the Pulitzer Prize jury for editorial cartoons.

José Alaniz Associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington – Seattle, is the author of “Komiks: Comic Art in Russia” (University Press of Mississippi, 2010). His research interests include Death and Dying, Disability Studies, Cinema, Ecocriticism and Comics Studies. His articles often appear in the International Journal of Comic Art.

David Schilter

David Schilter is a Swiss law graduate living and working in Latvia, the land that sings.

Together with Zane Zajanckauska and other locals he founded the first Latvian comics magazine “kuš!” in 2007. Since then he is regularly organising comics workshops and exhibitions in and around Latvia and as long as they don’t change their official slogan to “the land that draws” he will keep working on it.

to become a comic book publisher. For the last 5 years he’s worked at Kultura Gniewu publishing house , which brings works by Robert Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, Thomas Ott and many other foreign and local authors to Polish readers.

Witold

Tkaczyk Comics critic, member of jury of The International Comics Festival Competition in Łódź, form 1993 to 2004 the editor and chief redactor of AQQ Comics Magazine, today the founder and owner of Zin Zin Press - publishing house dedicated to comics, mostly historical. Lives and works in Poznań.

Joachim

Dvořák Czech editor and director of komiksfest! Prague

Szymon

Holcman Born in 1977.

Graduated in Film Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Always a fan of comic books, they entered his professional life when he became a reviewer for “Przekrój” weekly. He’s also written on the subject for other magazines and authored a chapter on Polish comic book artists in the acclaimed dictionary of young Polish culture “Tekstylia Bis”. He relinquished the role of a comic book critic

Catalogue

of madmen

Tomasz Mering, Tomasz Szatkowski, Tomasz Sitek, Nikodem Skrodzki, Paweł Noga Tomasz Mering ul. Leśna 15 84-200 Wejherowo Poland +48 694 834 600 sekatom@wp.pl mering.pl “Catalogue of madmen” is the project of an anthology of four comic stories, which are alternative worlds histories. There was a lot of madmen in the history. These stories

tells about some of them. Have you ever wondered what really was under the deck of the “Schleswig-Holstein”? “The Visit” is an another version of the visit of this German warship in Gdansk before The Second World War. “Job” tells about an alternative life of Adolf Hitler, where his “Mein Kampf” was never published. “Catalogue of madmen – case of Han S.” is a different history of an attack on wtc in New York.

“Lightings in the snow” tells about young inventor, who escapes from Moscow and takes refuge in a town in the northern parts of Russia. In the town where most of its habitants are miners, he finds his way of helping people using his knowledge and inventions. He discovers the history and se-

crets of this place and its people. He makes breakthroughs in his scientific research, but he is unable to share it with no one else except the people from the village. After a few years officials from Bolshevist Russia

The two worlds sepacomes there.

rated by ice desert and technological gap are going to collide.

Cats

and Nervolver

Tomasz

Niewiadomski

Tomasz Niewiadomski ratman@wp.pl youtube.com/ratmantv Tomasz Niewiadomski and his European cats are working on comic book about cat’s dreams.The main hero cat is Misio. His sister Pysia and Myszka are assisting him.

Misio wants to conquest space,meet

ated after explosion of atomic micro-

wave oven.

interesting persons ,visit different places of our galactic.He already met Leonardo Da Vinci,Isaac Newton and Sherlock Holmes.He has been on Mars.

Other project is second book of adventures of Nervolver, crazy hero-which is living in the strange world cre-

Dairy

of my dreams

Mikołaj Tkacz Mikołaj Tkacz +48 601 535 949 www.tkachoz.deviantart.com

Comics stories based on my dreams.

Electra

– theatre comic

Ivanka Apostolova Ivanka Apostolova www.ivankaapostolova.com; Facebook: Apostolova Ivanka Electra by Evripides, ancient drama as comic. Comic interpretation and adaptation of the ancient family tragedy and Electra complex. Sister and brother kills their mother, who killed their father Agamemnon and after wards she find a lover. Sent the children away making free space for her new

Human figures presented as Kontrapost/s. life as queen with yang lover.

In

the last penal colony

Karol Konwerski, Mateusz Skutnik Karol Konwerski karol.kownerski@gmail.com +48 512 043 803 www.pastelgames.com “In the penal colony” is the first of three short comic stories set to expand the main focus of Franz Kafka’s works – a talmudic or even cabalistic topos/archetype book and law guiding human life. The authors intent is not to adapt Kafka’s works but to create a complex continuation based on what Kafka wrote.

The authors want to show the “Kafka’s situation” in a world created by Mateusz Skutnik as a continuation of the “Revolution” comics. .

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City

games

Tomek Kalitko Tomek Kalitko tomek_kalitko@personel.art.pl +48 505 66 41 66 A graduate of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. A degree with honours. At present an assistant at a painting studio of the Academy. I deal with painting and comics. I wrote and illustrated the comic book Pan Karol. I want to broaden the limits of comics and the narrative range of painting and draw Urban Comics whose boards appear in various parts of town, read randomly except the beginning and ending. The whole is attached with a map showing the sites with the boards. It is only one of the ideas for comics or search and broadening of the narrative space in painting.

As a painter I am interested in the time of an event, space, colour, expression; this is the source of experiments on the form of painting. Combining different kinds of artistic activity is very refreshing and lively; I think it is of benefit to both painting and comics, if such division is needed. A large format enables me to convey the meaning differently and one frame of canvas makes me approach painting form very responsibly.

What is of the highest interest to me in the combination of fields is a possibility of fuller

a chance of describing the reality around me better and more precisely.

expression –

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Mikropolis. Terra

Incognita

Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz

and Dennis Wojda

Krzysztof Gawronkiewicz gawronkiewicz.carbonmade.com miasteczkomikropolis.blogspot.com

“Mikropolis – Terra Incognita” This is the story of Murnau, the oldest citizen of Mikropolis. M. has never travelled abroad and he regrets this now in the autumn of his life. To M’s great surprise he receives a letter from his childhood hero – the courageous Captain – encouraging M. to go and seek his life’s last great adventure.

M. takes of in his washing machine (in fact an interdimensional traveling device). He runs

out of washing powder and crashlands in the Unknown, an impenetrable wasteland surrounding Mikropolis, inhabited by the Wolfs of the Subconscious and the cruel Cyclopes.

M. is saved from dying of thirst by a flock of wild chairs. Joy ends when the Cyclopes capture them. M. escapes but saves the chairs. After many adventures M. finds his goal – an all seeing Oracle. It shows him a long lost memory: as a boy M. used to play with his fathers terrestrial globe and dream of exotic places and future expeditions. His dreams came to an end after smashing the globe into pieces. M. then made a choice in his heart to never travel.

M. is now cured and decides to return home, but leaving the Unknown is more difficult than getting there. The Wolfs attack him but

After spending a romantic night together the woman shows M. the long way back home. he is saved by a savage woman.

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Modistilatizzle Bartosz Sztybor, Maciej Pałka Bartosz Sztybor kropkazent@poczta.onet.pl, Bartosz Sztybor – kropkazent.digart.pl Maciej Pałka – maciejportfolio.blogspot.com “Modistilatizzle” is an oneiric story, that unfolds in an imaginary world, which is a reflection and a metaphor for our times. The main characters of the story are three men – Bugda, Albin Ilach and Jarema Chrestomat – who are surrogates of three most famous religious characters (Buddha, Allach and Jesus

They must find themself in this incomprehensible world, in which despotic and never seen Modistilatizzle holds the reins.

Christ).

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Ordinaries Tomasz Kontny, Joanna

Karpowicz, Paweł Piechnik

Paweł Piechnik +48 506 050 458 littleninjapp@gmail.com www.kontny.org.pl www.j-karpowicz.blogspot.com www.pawelpiechnik.com Tomasz Kontny, still in his twenties, lives in Katowice. Part scriptwriter, part journalist.

Gave life to 2 theatrical plays: “Maszynopis” (Typescript) and “Bierzcie i jedzcie” (Take and eat). Co-author and publisher of “Opowieści tramwajowe” (Cable car tales) — anthology of public transport comic books.

Comic books to his scripts were published in the following anthologies: “W sąsiednich kadrach” (Neighbouring frames), “Powstanie ‘44” (Rising ‘33), “Copyright” and elsewhere in: Wysokie Obcasy, Chichot, Anglorama, Jeju and Maszin.

Joanna Karpowicz, born in 1976, Krakow (Poland). Graduated at Academy of Fine Arts

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in Krakow.

Professionally occupied with comic books, illustrating and graphics.

Paweł Piechnik, born in 1981, Poznań (Poland). Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture Architecture obtaining a Master’s degree at the Poznań University of Technology in 2005.

In the years 2004-2005 he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. Since

problems. Their imagination supplies them with associations and metaphors of 20th century pop-culture: movies (Taxi Driver, Fight Club, Scream, Godfather, Grease), writers (F. Kafka, E. Hemingway, Philip K. Dick), characters from literature and historical events.

The third episode is a story based on the idea of magical realism. In this episode plots of both characters meet by means of the

2005 he has been professionally occupied with comic books, illustrating and graphics.

Currently he lives in Poznań in Poland.

ABSTRACT: Story of a contemporary couple in their thirties who struggle with unhappy love and their parting. In an ironic and emotional way they tell stories of their disappearing relationships and then try to start lives anew. The reason for their meeting is the Guidebook — halfmagical, half-real book of ‘best behaviours’ in relationships and love.

ALBUM: Comicbook consists of 3 episodes.

Two of them are stories of break-up told from the perspective of a man and a woman — young people who did not succeed in love. Their views on modern honesty is mixed with visions of them trying to cope with their

Guidebook filled with the knowledge of whole generations of women. In the end there is a suggestion of good finale for both characters, but no banal happy end.

‘Ordinaries’ is for people in their twenties and thirties: modern romanticists, bored with infantile love-stories who feel good in the world of pop-cultural associations.

Each episode consists of 24 pages.

The Mesiah Project Petr Novák Petr Novák petr.novakkk@centrum.cz, +42 732 167 778 www.ticho762.com Someone says that the reality is just one, dimensions are only three or maybe four.

Someone else says we have infinite variety of dimensions. I don’t know who’s right.

But I think that the notion of things which we can see or touch could be everything.

A story from the world of comics where evil machines have neverendless power and control the whole comics production. A new superhero has raised with only one reason – to destroy this comics world… but something went wrong.

The dream might be the reality.

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“Quasimotions” Agnieszka Piksa Agnieszka Piksa +48 602 81 49 22 www.agapixa.blogspot.com How to focus the comics-readers perception on the source of story-art? It is not any illustration- cyckle. Its arranging the field for imagination: what is between two pictures?

The time is not going always on straight line! The “proper” movie is occupating the whole space of vievers brain. After we think, we are not able to read and follow pictures at one time. But here is not a speedness competition. Its just staying on crossroading, unsolutioned ways of word and image.

Every common detail can give the reason for “quasimovie”, with opened eyes, we doesnt need to live surrounded by hugh actions.

Looking for inspiration and dialog is basic; but it is easy to forgot the hidden, unspectacular values, and how necesery is the empty-time celebration.

Different size of works can be hard for printing. Maybe the “leporello” model, one-line

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composition is an idea. Serie of longpapers“longplays”. Also translation, is the strong exercise. Some texts (like in local taste, social groups dialects) I dont really know how to show in other language. And why black and white? I know I can ask somebody

But I prefer to let things to be pure. for colors.

“Russian Avantgarde

comics” – persons, stories, poems.

in

Vladimir Palibrk, Guido Van Hengel

Guido Van Hengel gvhengel@gmail.com +31 616 681 688 Vladimir Palibrk vladimir.palibrk@gmail.com +38 1 621 621 673 www.strip-it.org www.myspace.com/elektrikapancevo

“Russian Avantgarde in comics“ anthology came as an idea of uniting two equally vibrant and alive worlds – contemporary alternative comics and the legacy of russian avantgarde literature from begining of XX century.

We believe that these two worlds are corresponding quite good, considering their lucid, humorous, critic, sometimes absurd and grotesque approach to representing reality.

We are searching for 10-20 authors from all over the planet who would be willing to cooperate with us and create 5-10 pages stories after the texts we have chosen, from the earliest ancestors of avantgarde to it’s most vibrant contemporary echoes. Through this concept, we tend to connect the literature theory experts (as our consultants) and

wider comics art audience, creating a book which is both informative and can stand for itself with its distinctive content and

It is to be published in three countries in three languages – Serbia, Holland, Russia. personality.

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The Story

of Gardens

Kuba Woynarowski Kuba Woynarowski +48 509 575 264 j.woynarowski@gmail.com phantascope.blogspot.com The s tory takes place simultaneously in two different spaces (the both probably belong

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to the same person) – a flat in a block of flats and the abandoned allotment garden becoming a wildlife sanctuary. An idea is inspired by XVIIth century still life paintings, in which the state of ‘death’ reveals also to be a kind of ‘silent life’. In ‘The Story of Gardens’ – a mute graphic novel – we can see no human characters, but it’s uncertain if it’s absence of single man or mankind in general.

This uninhabited world, frozen in the 80’s,

reminds us of Pripyat, abandoned city in the zone of alienation, established after the Chernobyl distaster; the red colour of plants (supplementing black&white drawings) is similar to the Red Forest, which turned ginger brown as a result of the radiation. The only inhabitants of this area – overgrown with plants (in which we can observe subtle

seem to be multiple insects, appearing in the garden, but also in the flat, accelerating the process of human world’s deconstruction. physical abnormalities) –

Tower Janek Koza Janek Koza www.fungun.republika.pl

“Tower” is a story about everyday life in a big corporation.

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Why

do you ask if you know already Karol Konwerski, Andrzej

Salawa

Karol Konwerski karol.kownerski@gmail.com +48 512 043 803 “Why do you ask if you know already” is the first of several comic stories about a small part of the gypsy minority living in Nowa Huta (one of several Krakow districts known as one of the perfect workers city in the socialistic times).

The gypsies living there are pointed out as a seperate nationality following only their own rules that neither the communist nor the present government can change.

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The gypsies with their own culture and language also created their own criminal or-

ganization whitch rules and accting ways didn’t change for fifty years.

Windmills Agata Nawrot

suicide.

Agata Nawrot nada@tlen.pl +48 504 430 771 agatanawrot.daportfolio.com/ It was just a dream. Only what you can feel is real. Decisions and intentions matter.

These statements are questioned in this contemporary legend about an old windmill standing on a hill in Budapest. It influences the fate of a Polish immigrant, causing strange events. Creatures resembling Hungarian grey cattle, puli dogs or mangalica pigs, appear in the girl’s dreams and then materialize. She dreams that the landlord’s girlfriend that seems to be eternally pregnant, bears broken things from the flat. They are fixed when she wakes up. The border between reality and dreams gradually fades, she’s not sure what’s true anymore and doesn’t feel the consequences of her own actions. With shorter days of autumn, she gets more sad and alienated, but most of all irritated by her troublesome landlord. She folds her anger into origami fish every day. One day she lets their angry stream out, washing him off to Danube. When she regains her sense of reality, his body is found in the river. She tries to confront her guilt by speeding up time thanks to a cat building with 12-eyed clock.

It only makes it worse, so she throws herself from the windmill, replacing the soul of a former

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Organizatorzy:

Współorganizatorzy: Instytut Kultury Europejskiej w Gnieźnie UAM

Partnerzy

Patroni:

POLSKA KULTURA NIEZALEŻNA

ILDIA.PL

Notes

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Notes

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Let's

send your

comics project to the next edition of EAST COVER

Pitchings

catalogue deadline is the end

of February 2011 www.ligatura.eu ISBN: 978-83-930146-5-1-4