Are you interested in comics, collective work and drawing anthropology?

We are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss these topics together at a two-part, hybrid panel on January 26, 2022. This panel is part of a week-long workshop, in which the DELTA project team works together with comic artists from the four study regions on a comic book with delta stories.

Comics are becoming a crucial genre for representing and communicating ethnographic insights and anthropological debates. A turn towards comics and cartoons also characterizes publications from other disciplines eager to communicate beyond their academic confines. Where reading increasingly happens in a context of visual elaboration and abbreviated texts, ethno-graphic novels and anthrographics can be ways of illustrating anthropological arguments for wider audiences. They can speak to the imagination, inviting readers to undergo a personal experience beyond the voice of an authoritative anthropologist. But this genre can also be a way of formulating new messages, representations and understandings altogether, if making comics is taken not as a rendering of given texts in visual format, but as a collectively creative process.    

This panel draws on the experiences with comic-making from artists, anthropologist and others, paying particular attention to emerging forms of representation and messages that develop in the collective process. We will also discuss questions of visual narrative, the interplay of text and images, envisioned audiences, and dynamics of collective work between artists, academics and others. The background behind this workshop is a current comic project, in which the DELTA Project team is working together with artists from its four study regions to design comic stories about pertinent topics from the four river deltas.

There are two options for participating:

1. Current regulations permitting, please join us in person in Room 251, on the ground floor of Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24, 50931 Köln, Germany
2. Join the virtual meeting. Please note that all times below are in CET (Central European Time).

In either case, please register by January 25, 2022, using this link: https://forms.gle/896efHBS6CvWyJBM8

Preliminary programme

Part I        

15.30    Welcome and introduction

15.40    Thinking sideways: drawing as a way of seeing, writing and knowing

Steven van Wolputte (anthropologist, Belgium, https://anthrographics.wordpress.com/)

16.00    2 scriptwriters and 19 female artists on women's suffrage in Switzerland: a collective project mixing personal experiences and historical data

Sarah Waeber (anthropologist, Switzerland, co-author https://la-buche.ch/portfolio/les-voix)

16.20   Comics collaboration and remix

Frederik von Reumont (geographer, Germany, co-author https://www.startnext.com/ueber-uns)

16.40    Break    

Part II  

17.00    On the way towards a four-delta comic 

Beatriz Belo (artist and journalism student, Brazil, https://beatrizbelo.myportfolio.com)

Karis Gruben (artist, Canada, https://www.instagram.com/k_grub_art/?hl=en)

Pamplumus (artist, Senegal, https://www.instagram.com/pamplumus/?utm_medium=copy_link)

Thant Myat Htoo (digital artist, Myanmar, https://thanthtoo.artstation.com/)

DELTA Project team (anthropologists, Germany, https://delta.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/)

17.20    Collaboration and Anthropological-Storytelling in Comics

Coleman Nye (anthropologist, Canada, co-author https://lissagraphicnovel.com/)

Sherine Hamdy (anthropologist, USA, co-author https://lissagraphicnovel.com/)

17.40     Zwarwald is difficult to translate

Leo Leowald (comic artist, Germany, http://leowald.de/)

18.00   Discussion

19.00   End

If you have any qiestions, please contact delta-infouni-koeln.de.

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