So, we’re at the press centre which is the mirror-lined, gilded stucco-banquet hall of the Town Hall, and Lewis Trondheim just dropped by with a camera crew, talking nonsense and doing a little dance for us. No shit.
We exchanged a few words – he in Finnish, me in Chinese. Nice chap.
More later.
Photo: T. Thorhauge
Danmarks førende MC, Jokeren, har skrevet en kort og koncis tekst om sit syn på hip hop, tydeligvis tænkt som en grundtekst til alle newbies, der ikke har læst på lektien, men samtidig også en art mission statement fra manden selv. Vi ved alle, at Jokeren er god med sproget når han tager sig sammen, og teksten her er sgu i det store og hele on point. Man kunne ønske sig, at han udtrykte sig på skrift oftere. Desværre rummer den samtidig et par paradoksale problemer, affødt af den storefar-attitude der naturligvis tilkommer ham men samtidig også får ham til at lyde en kende forstokket.
Jokerens præcisering af hvor hip hop kommer fra og hvad der er dens animerende kraft er både malende og skarpt formuleret og bestemt et velkomment bidrag til en dansk hip hop-kritik der ellers savner den slags fundementale indsigter. Det er følgeslutningerne, der er problematiske. I sin iver efter at bevise, at han bestemt ikke er player hater – det havde vi heller ikke regnet med, hr. “Gigolo Jesus” – tager han den værste spekulations-hip hop i forsvar.
Since it’s Tintin-creator Hergé’s centennial this year, the rights holders at Moulinsart have organized a large retrospective showing of works from his whole career in collaboration with Paris Beaubourg (that’s the Pompidou Centre to anyone not on the team). The show takes up a large part of the basement area that opens to the main hall, as well as the catwalk behind it. We get a little of everything Totor, the boy scout, and Quick and Flupke, the street urchins, to illustration and publicity work and, of course a large selection of original pages spanning the almost 60 year-long career, as well as sketches other drawn and written preparatory work (no models!)
Just received an email from Yvan Alagbé, who assures us that the Anke F.-book I mentioned last post will definitely be available at the festival. He writes: “Actually it’s a picture book Stefano Ricci printed with Depot Noir 4… We bought some copies from D406 and printed a new cover.”
That’s good news, Yvan!
Some might have thought that, the pirates would leave the Angoulême festival alone, now Lewis Trondheim had been elected President and reformed the awards. Not so. Despite the invitation – from Trondheim, not the festival, we understand – to avant-garde cartoonist and -publisher Yvan Alagbé to sit on the jury, he and his colleagues at pioneering publishing house Frémok are not satisfied with the festival’s treatment of anything that does not fit into the conservative mainstream sensibility of the festival organizers.
“Do you really know what (not who) you are dealing with here? In actuality, no. You don’t have the foggiest. Blinded by some diffuse aura, some notion of supposed influence, you really thought you had a means of pretending to be the new friend of these dishevelled rowdies to whom you’ve given the moniker “alternatives” [by having Alagbé on the jury], and that we will therefore stroll happily through your fair city, beholding the true face of the colourful publications you prefer (those of your childhood). You shouldn’t do such things. It’s called putting on a blindfold while playing with fire. It’s extremely dangerous.”
Skulle man være i tvivl, skal det straks fastslås: tegneserietidsskriftet STRIP!s bagmænd, Paw Mathiasen, Poul Petersen, Benni Bødker, Lasse Holm og Thomas Berger er alle hædersmænd. Oven i købet nogle overordentligt gemytlige og rare hædersmænd, vi er vilde med dem! Drengene har siden marts 1998 sikret danske tegneseriefans et magasin, som er udkommet 4 gange om året, komplet regelmæssigt : så absolut en prisværdig og respektindgydende indsats.
Men det nys udkomne nummer 36 konsoliderer en tendens, der efterhånden har været læsbar gennem en række numre: gassen er gået af ballonen. STRIP! er blevet et gabende uambitiøst, dybt forudsigeligt og komplet uengageret blad. Og det er synd.
Was lucky enough to catch the show of Quattrocento sculptor Desiderio da Settignano at the Louvre on its last day. You gotta be a bastard not to be taken in by the Florentine stil dolce – sweet style – of which Desiderio (c. 1430-1464) is one of the masters.
He is easy to love, but that does not make him less of an artist. Desiderio finds beauty in sweetness. And while this seems quite the natural thing to do, it is nevertheless a rare thing. Sweetness is usually just sweetness, or – *shudder* – cuteness. Desiderio is none of that. His busts of children, laughing or looking ahead in apt concentration, are tender statements of utter confidence in humanity.
Here we are. About to embark upon a new project. From what little knowledge we have of Hindu tradition, we understand that it is always prudent to bring along elephants. To salute God in the aspect of good fortune, intellect and wisdom – Ganesha.
Since what we hope to achieve with the Metabunker is a useful and intelligent contribution to discourse on the issues we’ll be addressing, invoking Ganesha seems prudent. Also, we’ve always been fond of the new when it offers a lasting evolutionary contribution to human experience, or however you want to put it. Whether we have anything new to say in this sense is, of course, up to others to judge, but this basic fondness of ours makes a toast to the god of new beginnings doubly appropriate.
And besides, Ganesha has been a favourite of yours truly since childhood. Probably because he’s an elephant god, whose ample belly contains infinity. It doesn’t get anymore awesome than that.
Aum Shri Ganeshaya Namah!
Yes, I know the drawing above is not of Ganesh, but of a perfectly ordinary elephant, resident of the city Amsterdam in 1637 and delightfully captured by Rembrandt. The drawing is at the British Museum in London.
