comic project: CARGO

[panta rhei]

comic reporting represents an exciting new development in the documentary reporting genre. six artists from israel and germany experimented with this form, combining it with a three-week research period in both countries.

jens harder, tim dinter, an jan feindt from germany spent three weeks in israel, israeli artists rutu modan, guy morad, and yimri pinkus travelled to germany for that period of time.
they walked the streets and observed and participated.
then they returned to their studios and transferred the material they had collected into an illustrated story telling of everyday life, coexistence, culture and religion in the other country.
the book they created is named "cargo".


read about it here:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/657523.html






images from the cargo's publishing company's webpage, http://www.avant-verlag.de/

[Zlatko Waterman]

WOW, Panta! Thanks:

For this excellent web site. I have found some new comix artists to admire, including "Igort": "5 ist sie perfekte zahl" looks really neat, and I love "Igort's" style.

There are many titles here that grab my interest, on a very well-made site. "Cargo" is also beautifully composed and drawn.

I managed to download some of the page facsimiles, once I figured out, with my crippled German, what "innenansichten" meant.

German is so damned logical, with all those little words hooked together to form those quite clear large words ( or worten, I suppose), once you get used to it.

Again, thank you very much for the link to this marvelous art.

I am a longtime fan of European comix, and have collected mostly French and Italian ones.


( link to my own online comic story)

http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/zygotet ... emain.html


( note: Don't be put off by the violent and grotesque current page. Take a look at the preceding ones-- all the way from #1 if you have the time. The current episode is the ONLY incident involving violence and murder in the whole series. The story is approaching its climax currently . . .Enjoy-- Z)



Your comix-making friend,


Zlatko

[judih]

What a fascinating project. Thanks, a, for finding it and bringing it here.

amazing what the artist's eye sees.

[jimboloco]

Tel Aviv, leibebvoll of the domestic, gennant, never is sowed sleeps aush a city that. Here prailt the urbane life of the erten world on the Landliche poverty of that bluez szene.

[panta rhei]

zlatko, yes - these avant folks have quite an interesting programme.

and yes to the long word constructs in the german language.
the longest german word is "Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft" (80 letters), meaning "the club for subordinate officials of the head office management of the danube steamboat electrical services" (name of a pre-war club in vienna).

i wonder if it ever got really used.
other long (and used) words are "Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz", expressing in 63 letters a law having to do with beef and mad cow disease, and "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften" (39 letters), which is the lonegst dictionary word and means "insurance companies that provide legal protection."

but then, there is no real 'longest word' in german, as we make up grammatically correct words when needed.
for example, when numbers are written in german, the individual words are concatenated together. thus, the longest word would probably be the written form of an extremely large number. considering that numbers can be infinitely large, then the largest word should theoretically have no limit.....

my third yes goes to your comic story. of course i know it. and i think it's brilliant. i especially love you you play with the genre clichés...

and no - the plural of "wort"/word is not worten, but "wörter".


judih - yes, ain't it amazing how eyes observe and see and mind and hands form and transform?
i think it's a great project and would be a cool thing to do with artists from all over the world.

jim - "tel aviv, lovingly called 'big orange' by the locals, is another citiy that never sleeps. here, the urban life of the first world crashes onto the rural poverty of the (...last word unreadable...)"

[tinkerjack]

ten four Norman

focused, factual account, through a personal column style, and finally an investigative report.

Comics have the advantage in other types of journalism, in more personal reporting, which increases the importance of the observing artist."

"the documentation of an expectation."

Unlike photography, which immortalizes a situation at a specific moment, Modan feels the illustrations immortalize a permanent situation, to which the personal angle of the artist is added.

What’s not to like?

Celan's Poem, I got a copy on that. best emoticon I could think of. maybe First time I have read it.



wörter that is how the natives of Balwmer pronounce "water"

I flunked German, I was doing fine until the instructor criticized me for speaking in a Yiddish accent. So much yiddish is German I think, then there is High German and Low German.

It is the little German words that intrigue me, it, I,

I think that is what I admire so much about German, precision.

My grandmother would say animals fressen and people essen,


I worked as a chem tech trying to synthesize a compound from the directions given in a German patent. I set off a hell of an explosion becausetranslation was a little off.

[whimsicaldeb]

a lot of good things are coming out of Kids with Cameras -- I'm not talking about (just) the organization; I'm referring to all the good ideas; views of life and new ways of seeing social issues both large and small that these kids with cameras are creatively tackling and then giving back to us (moldy oldies).

examples:

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/0 ... tos23.html
Cameras give kids a new view
Over-the-Rhine girls produce beauty amid poverty of their surroundings

...

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001626.html
Kids With Cameras' Zana Briski is WorldChanging
Cameron Sinclair

English born Zana Briski came to the states and took up photography after earning a master's degree in theology and religious studies at the University of Cambridge. In 1997 she made her second trip to India, this time to start documenting the prostitutes of Calcutta's red light district. After developing relationships woth the communtiy three years later she began conducting a series of photographic workshops with the children of the Calcutta prostitutes. By 2002 Briski had formed Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization to help educate the children of Calcutta's prostitutes and to empower other marginalized children worldwide through learning the art of photography.

In 2003 Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman completed their first film, Born Into Brothels, a snapshot (sorry, bad pun) into the groups work in Calcutta. In the past year the film has won over 17 film festival awards, including the 2004 Sundance Film Festival Documentary Audience Award and being shortlisted for the IDA award, the press are already talking about a possible Oscar nod for this stunning film.

Following the success of Born into Brothels, Zana Briski and the Kids With Cameras staff are mounting a campaign to provide a combined educational and residential facility for the children whose lives were touched by the workshops, and for children like them around the world.

If funding is found, the Kids with Cameras School of Leadership and Arts will operate under the principles of leadership, compassion, wisdom and artistic exploration. The Home and School will provide a safe space for learning and expression, away from the dangers and degradation of the city’s red light district. Teachers will empower the city’s forgotten children by encouraging academic excellence, leadership qualities, participation in sports activities and studies of the arts.

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/home/
http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/aboutus/

"We at Kids with Cameras comprise a small, vibrant and passionate group dedicated to bringing Zana's original vision to light. We believe in the power of art to transform lives. Unique, intelligent and deeply committed..."

(end excerpt)

...the power of art to transform lives...

yep, yep, yep

[tinkerjack]

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

To take a photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in a face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

To take a photograph means to recognize – simultaneously and within a fraction of a second– both the fact itself and the rigorous organisation of visually perceived forms that give it meaning.

It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.

I was surfing for Ted Hughes’ Oresteia when I stumbled on that quote.
http://www.henricartierbresson.org/hcb/home_en.htm

[jimboloco]

Thanks for the translation of the upper first word play, now it makes sense. I saved the image then was able to magnify it and copied the words into my free translation, not so good eh?

The second comic is really rather poignant

a fellow buys a sandwich in the street and is walking when he spied a memorial stone for Hannah Stein, who died at Auschwitz and suddenly his visage is changed as he looks about him and the urbanscape becomes curiously indifferent.

I have noticed a similar kind of experience when going to, or by, our local peace demonstrations. One or two blocks away, all is unchanged, the daily routine, then the intensity of a small coalesced peace group, and then two blocks away, complete indifference again. Makes you wonder, what diff does it make? Yet that one solitary soul was touched in a way that sensitises, and also perhaps expresses the general indifference that most people feel most of the time. An evocation of lonliness or alienation, maybe.

[panta rhei]

deb - i like this kids' cameras project... transformation through spontaneity and moments!

jim, yes, these are the wondrous moments when we, among the buzzing crowds of steps and seconds, find pieces of time that have fallen out of their fixtures to lay still underneath the ever moving surface and our busy steps ...

[jimboloco]

that's another interpretation, I wish I could feel that way

[Marksman45]

What a strange and fantastic thing. Why has this not been done before? And if it has, why didn't anyone tell me?

Zlatko- thanks for posting the link to The Literary Life. I've been trying to figure out how to get to it for ages :)