Ok, ok. Long time no blogging. I’ll try to make it up in the days to come.
So. What’s new?
Today, I’ve made the translation of Dystopia04: Reclaimed into Swedish. Everything except the title, which I will have to figure out during the evening. Something that retains the double meaning of the English one, if possible. But the best I’ve come up with so far is “Dagen då vi spöade snuten“. I’m not sure if that’s good enough.
Dystopia04: Reclaimed. Cover (and contents) by Mattias Elftorp.
Later, I will talk a bit about Dystopias 02, 03 and 05. I might also mention AltCom, but that should probably wait a while longer. And if I could just find the time to actually sit down and continue drawing Piracy is Liberation 008: Spiders pt 2, I’m sure I’ll have something to show and tell about that (more than this one, which is a page from the second chapter):
Check this out: Article about me by Hannah Oredsson at the You, Me & Tommy Lee blog.
This bit about Piracy is Liberation, CBK and Wormgod. In Swedish:
Think outside the city
Vecka 43
Mattias Elftorp är helt rätt i tiden. Och han har något som inte alls beror på timing eller trend; hängivelse.
Han har gått alla tre steg (år 1, år 2 och kreativt friår) på Serieskolan i Malmö med några års mellanrum. Han startade upp C’est Bon Kultur tillsammans med Oskar Aspman, Jacob Kindstedt och Daniel Novakovic. Denna alternativa seriekulturförening kan med sina antologier numera konkurrera med klassiker som Galago. Mattias är också mottagare av en rad stipendier, bistånd som utan undantag går rakt in i hans konst igen.
Mattias kombination av konst, populärkultur och politik skapar ett unikt stilgrepp som hittills främst fått sitt uttryck i hans mastodontprojekt cyberpunkserien Piracy is Liberation. Den 7:e delen kom ut nyligen och hans mål är 20 stycken. Med tanke på hans ovan nämnda engagemang tvivlar jag inte en sekund på att han kommer att nå dit. Det som framförallt övertygar mig om att Piracy is Liberation är en serie att hålla ögonen på är att den inte liknar något som jag vanligtvis gillar i bildberättarväg. Men jag kan inte lägga ner den när jag börjat läsa och ser fram emot att läsa varenda del. Den är mörk och dystopisk, queer och radikal. Det politiska perspektivet är konstant närvarande utan att väga tyngre än intrigen. Som läsare sugs man in en liten bit till för varje sida som vänds.
Mattias håller sig konstant på fronten. Han är inte rädd för nya grepp. Han lämnade nyss C’est Bon Kultur för konstprojektet Wormgod som han driver tillsammans med Susanne Johansson. Wormgod har redan hunnit med en handfull utställningar och utgivningen av 007 Spiders ur Piracy-serien. Ni kan vänta er att se Wormgod poppa upp lite varstans inom kort, och var inte rädda för att leta i ett mörkt skrymsle nära er… Det är därifrån bilderna, musiken och berättelserna kommer. Alla potentiella portaler till en dystopisk och otrolig framtid eller parallell värld.
The new Piracy is Liberationbook is almost finished. Just a little bit of postproduction left to do, then it’s off to the printer.
It will be out as planned in time for the Helsinki comics festival, September 12-13. And it’s just been decided that the publisher will be Wormgod, which I’m very happy with. It means keeping the book all in our own hands (me and Suss who makes the covers and is the other half of Wormgod).
Sample pages will be up at the site soon. Until then, here’s Suss’ cover:
The gods are real, but most of them are dead. Pirate learns this and many more secrets from the anarchists in the desert as he gets his new assignment. Something is moving on the net. Some kind of entities seem to be interfering with its users. Are these signs of the birth of a new god, or is it something else entirely? And how does it affect the plans for the Information Upgrade that the anarchists are planning? We also get some insight into everyday religious life in the City through the surveillance cameras of a Shopping Temple…
There are also some other upcoming projects, not the least of which coming from Wormgod. Stay tuned…
This may be my own personal opinion, but have you noticed how there’s never anything good on? And still you can get stuck in front of the TV screen for hours, then finally get up and turn it off and feel kind of dirty inside. Like your mind has been infected by something. TV is a media form that tends toward a kind of entertainment that is more concerned with profit than content.
Which is, of course, nothing new. Which in turn makes it even harder for me to understand how it can still hold such influence over our society. Now, before I continue, I should say that I can’t deny there are some TV things that I do enjoy watching. But those things can always be found in other places than the actual TV set, where you can watch them whenever you want instead of at one specific time. But that’s another story.
From Piracy is Liberation 003: Wires
Television in my cyberpunk postapocalypse is a bit exaggerated. In the City, people don’t just watch TV, they jack into it through their TV ports, with cables going directly from the TV into their brains. Indoctrination taken to a whole new level. So the TV transmissions in the comic symbolises more than the role of the actual television in our world. When they cut the transmissions in the comic, it means that they cut the entire means of distribution for the entire machinery of cultural mainstreamification (is that a word? It should be).
Which is what makes it so dangerous. As dangerous as it seems to be to squat a building in sweden, for some reason. And the authorities treat it in much the same way too, with extreme prejudice (re: Piracy is Liberation 006: Violence).
We live in a society that is very much based on the individual, but a lot of what happens, especially when it comes to events with the potential to change things, are happening on a collective level. It’s all about mass movements (which is probably why the current culture is so centered on the individual, because it makes the status quo easier to maintain).
So another thing I’m trying to do with Piracy is Liberation is to tell the story from a slightly different perspective. Of course, it’s very much about individuals. As a reader, you need characters to relate to in order for the story to work. But my characters are also parts of a greater collective. A collective that may not be visible as such at alla times, but one that is always present. When major changes take place, individual characters may be acting as catalysts, but there is always a collective that makes the real difference.
From Piracy is Liberation 004: Copies and Originals
This is something that may not be obvious, but I want it to run in the background, surfacing now and then in the climaxes as seen through the eyes of the individuals taking part in the movements of the story. I’m also trying to convey the feeling of working as a collective. The feeling that anything can be achieved, in a way that I would say you’ll never feel on your own.
There were a lot of issues that I had to consider when I began turning Piracy is Liberation into what it is today. Things I thought I’d like to speak about in the series, but I think that some things can be spoken about by not speaking about them. War is one of those things (how does a world where the concept of war doesn’t exist differ from ours?) that I might go into later. Gender issues is another, and that is what I’d like to talk about now.
I was thinking, should I use Piracy to talk about gender issues that we all live with here today by having the Piracy world be similar to ours, or should I take another approach. I’ve never tried to market Piracy as a feminist comic, but I’ve heard from people who think it is, and I can understand why they think so. Of course, it was my intention, but I wasn’t sure people would notice it and I’m glad they did.
From Piracy is Liberation 003: Wires
The thing is that there are a lot of stories, fictional and otherwise, that describe our gendered society and talk about inequalities and all that, but there are very few that show what things could be like without that shit. There are also some that turn the tables and present a world where men behave like women and women behave like men, but I’m not really interested in that either. I also have problems with drag sometimes, when it confirms stereotypes rather than question them. It doesn’t really change anything. Quite the opposite, almost.
So I present a world where men and women work under very similar conditions. They are able to do the same things, think the same thoughts, act on the same level. Because physical sex shouldn’t matter and gender (its mental/social counterpart) shouldn’t exist, and I wanted to see what would happen with my story if that was actually the case.
I still wanted the society in the City where the comic takes place to be hierarchical and conservative, but in other ways. It can be conservative when it comes to how we manage our relationships even if it’s gender equal. After all, relationships tend to be hierarchical in one way or another, no matter if they are heterosexual or homosexual, so I don’t think that heterosexuality or gender differences is a prerequisite for that.
After reading this, some may wonder why the opening phrase of the entire series is:
That’s it, stay still, bitch!
with a woman lying under the heel of a man’s boot, but the point in that scene is that the man is a policeman who could just as easily have been a woman. So it has more to do with power and violence and not so much to do with gender.
One final point I’d like to make is that the way I treat the subject in Piracy is Liberation, even though it’s pretty far from most other ficitonal stories produced in this society, is probably more similar to actual reality. Because the image we have of women as passive and men as the acting subjects throughout history can’t possibly be true. I thinks that’s simply another fictional story…
The description of my part of HackNight at Utkanten on Saturday:
I’ll be talking about the world of Piracy is Liberation, my cyberpunk postapocalypse series of graphic novels, where I got the idea for the original concept and how it progressed from there. By looking at the story and describing the City where it takes place, I hope to paint a picture of how the comic mirrors the reality of sweden in particular and capitalist society in general. I’d also like to talk a bit about how I’ve handled different story elements, like gender, media and collectivity/individuality when I’ve constructed this fictional world.
I may write something about any of these topics here on the blog during the week, if I’m not busy working on the new book.
It is also a Wormgod image and will be available as a print at the upcoming Wall 001 exhibition (when and where that will be remains unknown, so check the site in the near future for more info as it comes).
Becky Cloonan put in som very nice words for me at her blog after MoCCA. I’ve admired her work since I first saw it in her and Brian Wood’s Jennie One, so I think that’s very cool.
Piracy is Liberation by Mattias Elftorp- Mattias caught me at the end of the day on Sunday, and I felt pretty bad because I didn’t remember him right away from last year- but that changed once he showed me his work! He gave me books 3 through 6 of his series, to match 1 and 2 which I got last year. He’s working on volume 7, so I hope he can make it again next year so we can trade 🙂 Or maybe I’ll just have to hit a convention in Sweden!
I just wish I’d have time to do some kind of report about my new comics too. Then I’d let you know that I liked her art book (Burn Your Treasures) and Pixu 2 (I just need to find a copy of Pixu 1, because that was a really cool book).
Maybe I can do it after Crack!… Then I’ll probably have some more books to talk about. Now I mostly need to sleep to recuperate from Punk Illegal…
So I’ve started writing the next installment of Piracy is Liberation. Book 007: Spiders, as it turns out, will be book 007: Spiders pt. 1 and book 008: Spiders pt 2.
This may change, of course, but it’s the way it looks right now. The interesting thing is, now that I’m dividing the story up into volumes of ca 6 books, that I can no longer plan one book at a time (of course I used to have further plans before, but this time they need to be more detailed). Now I need to have a structure for book 007 that works in itself and also works together with book 008 and also works with the books up until 011. It makes the whole scripting process a lot more interesting.
What was going to be book 012 will now be book 000. Possibly made together with one or more other artists and based on a story I made for the very first issue of C’est Bon back in 2001.
So anyway. This next story arc will deal with the Information Upgrade that has been hinted at in the recent books. It will also deal with the religious/political system of the City as well as the apocalypse. How the world turned out the way it did. And, of course, the relationships and dealings of the characters we’ve met so far in the series.
So that’s it for now. More planning will be done and anything I just said may turn out to be a lie in the next few days/weeks as work progresses.
Welcome to
The Piracy is Liberation 006: Violence release party @ Utkanten (Industrigatan 20, Malmö) July 4 2009 Music: Harsh noise and industrial live performances and a DJ-set with a selection of violent music. Art: Two exhibitions on the theme of violence will be shown.
LIVE: CONCRETE THREAT will present a one-man performance this time, but promises an experience at least as harsh as last time. KOEFF returns, this time in person and not just projected on the walls. R.W.F. will do their first live performance in this constellation with their intense death-rave. NIMAM SPREGLEDA will deliver hard old-school industrial.
More bands may be added…
EXHIBITIONS: WORMGOD presents an expansion of the exhibition konSEKVENS that was shown in Växjö earlier this year. Wormgod is the combined forces of Susanne Johansson and Mattias Elftorp. MATTIAS ELFTORP will also make a rerun of parts of the Violence exhibitionwith a sequence from the book of the same name. : VÅLD
All back-issues of Piracy is Liberation will be available at good prices.
The entrance fee is 40 SEK, but you get in for free if you buy one or more copies of Piracy is Liberation. Please note that you need to be a member to get in. Send an email with name, first 6 digits and address to mattias@elftorp.com.
Membership costs 75 SEK/year.
