Release: Find me in this city

Releaseparty & exhibition of
CBA vol 31:
FIND ME IN THIS CITY
by Mari Ahokoivu

October 22 @ Biograf Panora (Friisgatan 19,  Malmö)
17-20
https://www.facebook.com/events/1610305892566412/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular&action_history=null&source=3&source_newsfeed_story_type=regular
Find me in this city is a story about isolation, finding your self and learning to be alone. The book mixes fiction and autobiographic elements. The end result is a fictive story of a girl who has lost her face in a strange city. While she is looking for herself, the cat is looking for the scary yet intriguing dark character who the dog is calling Nightmare. But can you trust a dog who is always lying? 

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Find me in this city was first published 2009 in Finnish by Asema Kustannus. It was Mari Ahokoivu’s first graphic novel, although not her first published comic book. Other publications by Mari Ahokoivu includes ”Sarjakuvantekijän opas” (BTJ kustannus 2007), Lola Olifante (Éditions Cambourakis 2014-2015) and Sanni och Jonas (Rabén & Sjörgen 2015). 

Mari Ahokoivu (b.1984) is a Finnish comic artist and illustrator who draws comics for adults and for kids and has been published in Finland as well as abroad. She has studied comics in Finland, France and Sweden and now sometimes teaches comics herself. Ahokoivu enjoys watching movies and playing roller derby. At the moment she lives in northern Finland.

This release exhibition is part of the comics festival I Seriernas Värld 2015.

CBK release weekend (Oct 16-17)

releaseweekendTwo CBK releases coming up:

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October 16 @ Tusen Serier (Mitt Möllan, Claesgatan 8, Malmö):
What we knew by Sarah Kläpp: Exhibition and release party.
SPECIAL RELEASE OFFER: Get the book for only 100:- SEK (ordinarily 150:-)!!!
Facebook event

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October 17Plan B (Norra Grängesbergsgatan 19, Malmö):
Creation of a god / Att bygga en gud by Henrik Möller & Lars Krantz: Book release/signing. Premiere screening of Almtorget crew from Videodirekt/Möllerfilm. + secret new film by Chrzu. +Live band: Scraps of Tape 
+DJ
Facebook event 
Entrance: 50:- (Swish or cash) or 100:- including the book (ordinarily 150:-)!
(there will be only a limited amount of books available at the door so come early if you wanna be sure to get one)
Sign up is a MUST. Do it HERE!

Review: When the last story is told

Mark Badger has written about Allan Haverholm’s When the last story is told: 

You can’t consume this like a traditional comic, with no words you can’t even read it. As you you turn pages you have to ask yourself why? In a book, 61 collages become one object. As one object each panel now has a relationship with all the other panels. The first page with juicy thick white paint built over collaged paper declares itself as “Art” these days. A textural stamped black smudge runs out underneath panel 2 and leads the eye to turn the page.

(…)

Another small chunk of light green paper sits over the bottom right corner, saying it’s time to turn the page. Which reveals a spread of stark black and white spread. The right pages second panels has a bar of orange peeping out over a scrim of paper. The first page is a checkerboard of dark and light texture, stamped, gestural and sprayed.

(…)

Reading fiction develops your empathy as you meet new people. Most comics are trapped in this pattern, the reader is never asked to engage beyond the level of a college academic. “When the Last story is told” demands you awake and become alive to another’s existence. You have to walk in his shoes and experience the making of the drawings as they are recorded to the page. The reader has to look and engage with another real human being who has made this work. As in life, there are no heroes, there’s just another day, filled with trauma, joy, death and life. You can’t be entertained by empathy, by the hero overcoming their obstacles. I have to make the meaning out of the book. I have to wake up, think and be alive in the moment.

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AltCom 2016

It is now confirmed that we will be organizing the AltCom festival in 2016, in cooperation with Tusen Serier.

We organized the first version of AltCom in 2004, then the Swedish Comics Association took over and turned it into a real, bi-annual festival starting in 2010.

We will soon update the AltCom website with information about the earlier festivals and what is to come for 2016…

About Lapsos in Comics Alliance

Article about Inés Estrada’s Lapsos (CBA vol 25) at Comics Alliance:

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[This] English language edition [is] something that should be on your radar. (…) Lapsos follows the adventures of two friends who discover the existence of various dimensions between their home city in Mexico, and the gradual realisation that everything is connected, it’s marked with Estrada’s signature gross-but-touching humour and vivid characterisation.

(…)

I’ve been incredibly excited to get my hands on this since it was announced earlier in the year, and you know, it’d be miserly of me not to share the good news- Estrada is a very highly regarded and popular artist, with a dedicated fan-base, and I expect that 1000 print run to sell out quickly, as has been the tradition with previous books.

(…)

A hugely talented artist, her comics are an example of some of the freshest, most vibrant, and relevant work currently being produced in the medium.

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Review: When the last story is told

Review of When the last story is told by Fredrik Strömberg at Goodreads. Here’s an excerpt:

My favourites are the ones where Haverholm seems to have used ink that he has splattered and smeared around. Reading/looking at abstract comics is always a bit like a roschach test, whatever you get out of it you probably put there yourself, and these starts my imagination, making me connect dots that are most likely not there in the first place.

Order the book by email: shop[at]cestbonkultur[dot]com

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CBA now available at the internet bookstores!

For a long time, many issues of CBA have been missing from the Swedish internet bookstores, but now they have been made available as it should be (including Allan Haverholm’s When the last story is told, Mattias Elftorp’s Piracy is Liberation, etc)!

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Have a look among our titles at AdLibris or Bokus, for example!
They’re not showing the exact same titles because of search engine issues, but look araound and you should find the issues you’re missing. You can also see the complete list here and use the ISBN to find individual titles in the bookstores.

Contact shop@cestbonkultur.com if you prefer to buy directly from us or if you for some reason can’t use the Swedich internet bookstores or if there’s something you still can’t find there…

Submissions for CBA vol 32

cbavol32submissions-eventWe are now open for submissions to the first anthology issue with the new editorial crew of CBA.

This will be CBA vol 32, the first issue of 2016 which marks the ten year anniversary of this incarnation of the antholoy. You will join the ranks of such great artists as Anke Feuchtenberger, Danijel Zezelj, David Mack, Ho Che Anderson, Rutu Modan and many more (see the complete list of creators who have participated in the past)!

What we are looking for is comics which rely on artistic ambitions and a will to experiment rather than what has been done a thousand times before. We want to expand the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in the comics medium.

The theme for this issue is BLUE BEGINNINGS which is a suggested theme, not obligatory. We don’t want you to feel constricted by this, but if you need the extra inspiration, use this theme however you want and make your own interpretation of the words.

Specifications:
Anything is welcome, but we prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages.
Format: 20x26cm
Color: Yes
Language: English
Format: .TIF
Resolution: 1200 dpi line art or 300 dpi grayscale/CMYK
Bleed: 5mm in all directions.
Within this space, there are no limits.

Please send us your FINISHED COMIC in high-resolution files from the start.
And also include a short presentation text about yourself, with URL (if you have a website).

Please ask us if you are unsure about formats, resolution, bleed, etc. We prefer stupid questions to bad files. And there are no stupid questions.

Send comics, questions, etc to:
submissions@cestbonkultur.com

Unfortunately we cannot offer you any payment for participating. If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can offer at this date. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material will stay in your hands and we do accept stories which have been published elsewhere before.

DEADLINE: October 31

Releaseparty: When the last story is told

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“When the last story is told, its absence rings with colour: Shapes & structure linger”–
Like the clap of thunder when the air rushes to fill the vacuum from a supersonic plane, Haverholm poses the question: When the last story is told, what fills the space it leaves?

Explore that space together with us at our releaseparty for this enigmatic new work by Allan Haverholm!

Friday, May 22, 17-21 @ Tusen Serier.
Claesgatan 8, Malmö.

Facebook event.

wtlstcvr_800When the last story is told
In the latest book by visual artist Allan Haverholm, narrative gives way to another order of meaning. Although the pages are divided into comic book grids there is nothing to constitute a traditional story, or even pictures in a sense that one would expect. The only text in the book, quoted above, frames the 60 pages of minimalist colour compositions alternatingly obscured with bold strokes of white paint and abstract, black textures.

The book questions one of the basic elements of our culture: storytelling and its underlying structures. Its very title suggests a potential end of narrative, but also that something else may fill the gap, a still-fluid substance or undefined fictional construct forming after this universal aphasia. Like a message from an alien mind, When the last story is told is loaded with meaning encoded in an undecipherable language.

Allan Haverholm (b.1976)
Since his 2006 book debut (the 300 pages Sortmund, hailed as Denmark’s first graphic novel), Allan Haverholm has stubbornly explored the comics medium for new approaches to the art form, changing effortlessly between a wide range of expressions to fit each new project. Persistent themes in his work include language and music, and their application in comics form.
When the last story is told is Haverholm’s eighth book as a single author; he has illustrated some fifty books, published several collaborations with likeminded artists, and appeared in more anthologies than he cares to think of or even count. His art has been exhibited internationally.
www.haverholm.com
www.twitter.com/haverholm