Stora Läsarpriset 2013 till Tusen Serier!

Fem papperslösa kvinnors historier (Five Undocumented Women’s Stories) by Amalia Alvarez won the big readers’ award for best Swedish graphic novel 2013!

The book, which is trilingual (Swedish/Spanish/English), was one of the first to be published by Tusen Serier and is available for ordering from  Serieaffären.se or Apart förlag.

books-5kvinnor0

Five comics based on the true stories of five women living in or having lived in Sweden “illegally”. One woman who the author met at the women’s shelter tells her story as an “imported wife”, another women whom she met in the trade union tells about the situation for the female undocumented workers in Sweden, trafficking, networks that exploit and abuse women, etc. Yet another story is about a woman whose application for asylum was rejected. She tells the tale of her road to Sweden.

Naturally, the details of these stories have been changed to protect the integrity of the persons involved, as they are illegal according to the system.

About Amalia Alvarez (writer & artist): 
Amalia Alvarez is a self-taught artists and has drawn for Arbetaren, Liberación, Mana and Clandestin@, a magazine for undocumented workers.
Website

Me & my Daddy & Zlatan

This book has been a long time in the making, but now it will soon become reality as a collaboration between Tusen Serier and Wormgod.

There will be more information soon, I just wanted to post the cover right now because I’m so excited. I wanted to pick a few preview pages, but it’s too late to do that now so I’m seving it for later.

This may well be the best single graphic novel I’ve made so far, on many levels. It’s not really like anything I usually do, leaning more towards the mainstream rather than cyberpunk or the various other styles I usually work with. You will see, sometime during the upcoming spring months…

So here are the two covers for the Swedish & English editions:

zlatancvr_

zlatancvr_eng

Hållbar konsumtion

Doing this in Swedish since the comic is in Swedish. Sorry…

Fick vidarebefordrat en inbjudan till den här tävlingen häromdan. Innan jag ens hunnit resa mig ur sängen hade jag skrivit ett manus som jag sedan tecknade samtidigt som jag gjorde det jag egentligen skulle göra.

Insåg såklart att den aldrig skulle vinna mig några 100 000 kr, så jag visar den här istället.

Varsågod!

Arg Kanin om Hållbar Konsumtion (klicka för större storlek)

3 days of darkness

I was going to have a vacation after AltCom and TRAUMA and the ERA exhibition at the new Tusen Serier space, but noo… The new issue of C’est Bon Anthology will be in color! And the deadline is next week!

So of course, I had to submit something to them.

They’re supposed to send it to print December 21. The last day of the Mayan calendar.

There was a viral rumor going around last week(?) saying that NASA had confirmed that there will be three days of darkness because of some alignment or other. So, I thought: Why not?

Read the whole thing in the new issue (if they accept my comic, of course). This here is page 2:

3days02
Acrylic + Photoshop

AltCom 2012!

AltCom 2012 is getting closer. Read all about it here: http://www.altcomfestival.se

To sum it up, this is what you should do:

WEDNESDAY (Nov 7):
– Tusen Serier exhibition opening @ Folkets Park 16-18.
This is an outdoors exhibition with me and Amanda Casanellas+ some of the artists of our project Tusen Serier: Amalia Alvarez, Emre Özdamarlar, Aida Ghardagian, Marco Leal. There will be wine, music, fire…

Then take a small break before going to

– CBK: In> <Bestween @ Biograf Spegeln 19-22
C’est Bon Kultur, my old comics collective, doing an exhibition about the stories in between the pages of a story by Allan Haverholm. There will be more wine and probably some other entertainment as well.

THURSDAY (Nov 8):
– CCC: Sem Fronteiras @ Galleri Ocampo 12-18
Portuguese Chili Com Carne had an exhibition a year ago at the same place. You might remember it (Futuro Primitivo). This time, it’s four artists, Ana Biscaia, André Lemos, André Coelho and Jucifer (two of which will be attending the festival), showing off their drawings. I’ve seen some of them already, they look great! There will be wine. I know that’s what you’re really after.

– Stripburger in print @ Café Simpan 18-01
A collection of Stripburger prints, posters, covers. This Slovenian group was probably my first contact with the European underground of comics, when some of them visited Malmö and SPX in 2003(?). Through them I discovered Danijel Zezelj, for example. Who you should really check out if you don’t already know his work…

FRIDAY (Nov 9):
– Nema Granice @ Kanten 13-17
This is a one-day exhibition only, so don’t miss it! I first discovered this part of the Balkan comics scene at some point when I stumbled upon an old piblication from Serbian Kosmoplovci/Studiostrip which I think was an exhibition catalogue or portfolio maybe. I thought there were some really interesting things there and I wanted to publish these artists in C’est Bon Anthology. I got their contact info through Ivana Armanini of Komikaze. Or I discovered them on the Komikaze site first and found the book later, who knows?
Meeting them all in real life for the first time at CRACK! years later, I heard about the Novo Doba festival in Belgrade so I went there the following year and met the people organizing it and here we are. And here they will be: Studiostrip, Komikaze, Turbo Comix/Novo Doba.
And yes: There will be wine and a DJ set by DJ Tozd.

Just after that, go from Kanten, across the street, through the fence and around the building to:

– Wormgod: Transgressions & TRAUMA @ Borgen 17-04
I tried to figure out what pictures to make under the title TRANSGRESSIONS for our Wormgod exhibition, but it seemed easier to make a book first and then use that as inspiration for the images. So I did. The art was a collaboration between me and Susanne Johansson (the other half of Wormgod) and there will be a soundtrack by Feberdröm. I got the books from the printer already and now we’re waiting for the CDs. And yes, then we made those pictures and we’re waiting for them to get printed too.
The first hour is the exhibition opening and there will be no entrance fee during this time, when we will also play a CD by Sektor 304 (who were going to play at TRAUMA but couldn’t make it) and show a video session with videos from Studiostrip/Kosmoplovci. Then TRAUMA starts, with 5 o’clock traffic, Anatomiteatern, Knullkraft, Khmer Noir and Lenhart Tapes (who I also met at CRACK!). There will be wine. There will be noise.

SATURDAY & SUNDAY (Nov 10-11):
– Comics fair @ Folkets Park 12-18 with lots of books, panels & presentations and more exhibitions, performance etc. I have to go to sleep now, so follow the link in the beginning of this post to see the details for this one. You’ll have to bring your own wine for this one.

And at all of these events, you can get the AltCom 2012 NO BORDERS anthology for free! 176 pages, comics by lots of international artists, cover by Bill Koeb. Niice!

 

Wormgod: TRANSGRESSIONS

In November 2012 during the AltCom 2012 NO BORDERS comics festival (more on that later), during the return of the TRAUMA noise festival (more on that later), there will be a Wormgod exhibition called TRANSGRESSIONS (more on that later) which is also a book/CD release for this new publication:

Image

TRANSGRESSIONS the book is the story of a man who didn’t want to be a man and a woman who turned him into something else. It is the story of these two outcasts trying to find a new life by crossing the border but get caught doing it. It is the story about their struggle to leave all rules behind. Social conventions, laws of physics as well as nations, even the most basic rules of their universe.

Contains necrophilia, zombification, gender transplants, human/animal gene splicing, fucking, human sacrifice, inhuman politics and unnatural birth. Enjoy!

TRANSGRESSIONS the CD is a soundtrack where each track corresponds to each chapter of the book:
1. GENDER ISSUES
2. MIGRATION
3. NECRO LOVE
4. MEMETIC TRANSCENDENCE

Story: Mattias Elftorp
Art: Mattias Elftorp & Susanne Johansson
Music: Markus Samnell

Release/exhibition/TRAUMA date: November 9

TUSEN SERIER: Jag är inte här (I am not here), TODAY!

Starting today is an exhibition from one of the projects I’m working with (I’m unemployed for the moment but I will start getting paid again this summer), TUSEN SERIER:

“I AM NOT HERE”
Vahedeh-Aida Ghardagian
Rosengårdsbiblioteket
April 23, 2012

 

About the exhibition:
Who is being portrayed, and how?
What has happened since museums were filled with portraits of kings ans queens? Who is being portrayed today? How are people being exhibited and for whom? What conceptopns are being portrayed?

About the artist:
“In my work, I move between art and activism. I have a global grassroots perspective, I live in close proximity to my art and work in social networks. I work with installation, digital media, images and texts.”

See you there!

Kristiina Kolehmainen

Kristiina Kolehmainen
1956 – 2012

Being part of the international and Swedish comics scene, I have a lot to thank Kristiina Kolehmainen for. She broke down some of the borders between Sweden and the rest of the world and gave me access to parts of the international comics scene I may very well have missed if it wasn’t for her.

The last time I met her, we shared a few beers after the end of the I Seriernas Värld comics festival in Malmö 2011. I was disillusioned over Sweden in general and she helped me see, not that I was wrong but that I had an ally. Someone who understood exactly what I mean and could give me some added insights into what’s wrong with this place. It meant a lot to me right then. Still does.

I miss you, Kristiina.