Art visual np2

picture: La Fievre d'Urbicande by François Schuiten & Benoît Peeters From October 12th to October 14th, will be held in Lisbon a very interesting symposium entitled Once upon a Place. Haunted Houses & Imaginary Cities . Guest speakers include: - Alberto Manguel (Author: The Dictionary of Imaginary Places , A History of Reading , among others) - Colin Fournier (Bartlett School of Architecture, London) - François Schuiten & Benoît Peeters (graphic novels authors) - Kazys Varnelis (Columbia Univ., NY) - Ângela Ferreira (artist) - Gonçalo M. Tavares (author/writer) The program is attractive with three full days of literary stimulation ! Thanks Pedro for reminding me about it.

William Heath Robinson is a cartoonist from the first part of the XXth century who spent most of his time to invent complicated mechanical apparatuses in order to achieve a single action. The absurdity that emerges from those machines is, in my opinion, a pretty good expression of technophilia in its ambiguity, most of the time fascinating but also sometimes sustaining its existence by its own contemplation... It makes me recall Hernan Diaz Alonzo's lecture 's conclusion at the Pompidou Center, one year ago, that was questioning the hyper sophistication of the Coyote's apparatuses in order to catch the road runner. This sophistication is so planed and contemplated that it eventually fails but rather than condemning it, Diaz Alonzo claims that this failure should be thought as part of the work. William Heath Robinson is regularly quoted by Peter Cook and CJ Lim as a potential reference for their work and their architectural studios in schools.

Still following the adventures of Julius Corentin Acquefacques, prisoner of the dreams (see previous article ), here is another graphic novel by the extremely talented Marc-Antoine Mathieu . This one is entitled La Qu... and has unfortunately not been translated in English (apparently only Dead Memory has been). This novel is once again extremely Kafkaian, but also borrows a small part of its narration to one of the best (and not so known) short story by James Graham Ballard called Billennium , which depicts an overpopulated world in which each citizen has the right on 3.5 square meters. The first image above also illustrate the influence of Marc-Antoine Mathieu since Lars von Trier's Dogville has been released ten years after La Qu... 's publication in 1993. An important precision here, I tried not to spoil the novel by including the best frames of it, so you can still be fascinated while reading it for the first time.

Marc-Antoine Mathieu is in my opinion the most interesting French graphic novels author. He succeeds in all of his work to re-create an absolute bureaucratic Kafkaian society with humor and intelligence. The graphic novel Dead Memory (yes it has been translated in English !)depicts a city that is subjected to the anonymous creation of huge walls blocking off its streets and composing a totally new labyrinthine space outside and inside the buildings. One could recall Terry Gilliam's Brazil (or in a less trivial way, Tzahal's siege of Nablus in 2002 ), when seing the comission of wall breaker who create some new streets within people's appartments. I think it is appropriate here to re-insert the text I translated from Auguste Blanqui who describe a guerrilla plan for French XIXth century revolutions: « L’attaque repoussée, il [l’officier] reprend et presse sans relâche la construction de la barricade en dépit des interruptions. Au besoin, des renforts arrivent. Cette besog...

Following a reader's suggestion, here would be my European (French and Belgian) graphic novel list developing an interesting and beautiful vision of the city. (You can obviously add Moebius who was already in yesterday list). For people not knowing Marc-Antoine Mathieu I definitely recommend to read his graphic novels which create an incredibly brilliant Kafkaian atmosphere. Here is the list: - Marc Antoine Mathieu : Memoire morte (Delcourt 2004) - Enki Bilal : Le Monstre: 32 Decembre (Casterman 2006) - Jean-Claude Mézières : Mon cinquieme element (Dargaux 1998) - Nesmo & Morvan : Ronces: Racines electriques (Les Humanoides associes 2005) - Francois Schuiten & Benoit Peeters : Les Cites obscures: La fievre d'Urbicande (Casterman 1993)

I just found this video (the one below) which tries to elaborate a "ranking" of the cities vision developed through graphic novels and comics. Obviously a lot of others could have been quoted here but the final list is already pretty good... (starting from above) - Moebius & Jodorowsky: L'Incal - Various authors: Gotham City ( Batman ) - Eddie Campbell: London ( From Hell ) - Chris Ware: Chicago ( Jimmy Corrigan: the smartest kid on Earth ) - Pat Mills, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra: Mega City One ( Judge Dredd ) found on AMNP and AJ AJ Top Five: Comic Book Cities from The Architects' Journal on Vimeo .