Category: Work

Love hearts…

I just stumbled upon this old picture (well, kind of old):

love_hearts

It was originally made as fan art for Kim W Andersson‘s Love Hurts, but I ended up giving him another piece. Now that I found this one I don’t think it’s that bad actually, so I thought I’d post it here.

Speaking of fan art… I’m featured in Åsa Ekström‘s Sayonara September (very nice, you should buy it), which was recently released. One full-page illustration of some of her characters:

sayonara_meg

“News”…

In the news today they were talking about new research results that said that humanity (at least us in the rich parts) are living above our natural resources and because of that we’re basically fucked. And they presented this as news.

I could have told them that when I was seven. They could have come to me 23 years ago and asked. Then maybe we wouldn’t have been as fucked.

But seriously, how can this be presented as news? I’m sure they must have mentioned it on TV in the 80s. Of course, that’s beyond the limit of how far ago people(?) remember things. But they said it again just a couple of years ago.

It is not news. We are fucked. And not in any good way. Stupid TV news.

–

In other news, there are some films coming out soon. Michael Moore is using the C-word, pointing out what the big problem is: Capitalism.

And there’s another film called The End of Poverty that says that the poor parts of the world are paying for the rich parts of the world. Because we are living above our rexources. Man, I could have told them that too when I was seven.

These two films are connected, to each other and to the first item I mentioned, in case that wasn’t already clear. I’m pretty sure I made that connection too when I was seven. It’s really not that hard to get.

And it kind of made me think that we deserve whatever we get in terms of being fucked. When I was seven.

–

Did the old Indians see this? Is that why they didn’t bother to count longer than to 2012? Because they fugured we’d get ourselves fucked right around now?

–

Oh, and maybe I should also mention that I’ll be at the Gothenburg Bookfair this week (Thursday to Sunday) and that my new book (and the old ones of course) will be there as well. Booth number

A02:39. Come check it out.

Piracy is Liberation 008: Spiders pt 1 -cover by Susanne Johansson
Piracy is Liberation 008: Spiders pt 1 -cover by Susanne Johansson

WORMGOD: konSEKVENS, soon at Panora, Malmö!

Galleri Panora 22 aug – 13 sep
Vernissage lör 22 aug kl 16-20
 
Wormgod: konSEKVENS
 konSEKVENS handlar om en händelse som utspelar sig i vår historia men som lever kvar i vårt kollektiva medvetande som ett ständigt hot. För hundra år sedan var allt annorlunda, men de flesta av oss som lever nu har på något plan alltid vetat att det närsomhelst kan ta slut. Vi har vuxit upp medvetna om vår egen dödlighet, inte som personer eller individer utan på en global nivå.

Det handlar om vapenutvecklarnas ansvarslösa kreativitet, om dem som blundar för människorna som hamnar ivägen i strävan efter makt och profit. Det är de människorna som får ta konsekvenserna. Konsekvenserna av en vapenindustri som till slut gör sig oumbärlig och självrättfärdigande. De slutgiltiga konsekvenserna av krig.

Den sekvens av bilder som vi har skapat är ett försök att plocka ut ett ögonblick och sätta det i ett större sammanhang men ur lite olika perspektiv, ett försök att sätta fingret på någonting som redan existerar i medvetandet hos både betraktaren och konstnärerna.

Bilderna på väggen består i sin tur av flera bilder som genom att de sätts i sekvens bildar en berättelse. En berättelse som inte är linjär utan ständig. Historien utspelar sig på en och samma gång i laboratoriet i Los Alamos, på gatorna i Hiroshima, i Vita Huset, i krigsindustrins företagsrum och på Panora i Malmö. På ett mentalt plan existerar all tid samtidigt och på ett mentalt plan lever vi alla i skuggan av svampmolnet.

Wormgod är Susanne Johansson och Mattias Elftorp.
Mer info finns på www.wormgod.net

Vernissage:
Lör 22 aug kl 16-20

Utställningen pågår lör 22 aug – sön 13 sep
Öppettider = när Biograf Panora är öppen för ordinarie filmvisningar – se kalendariet på Panoras hemsida.

Projektet Wormgod föddes i februari 2009 som ett samarbete mellan Susanne Johansson och Mattias Elftorp, som en reaktion på en mainstreamkultur som ofta är utspädd och anpassad efter minsta gemensamma nämnare. Vi vill bearbeta tunga ämnen genom hårda uttryck.

Wormgod är någonting mer än ett konstprojekt. Vi leker med både akademiska koncept och rena känslor samtidigt som det är viktigt att det finns en verklighetsförankring. Vi vill skapa den visuella motsvarigheten till musikgenrer som noise eller power electronics, någonting som är överväldigande snarare än underhållande.

Vi lever i ett samhälle där schlagerfestivaler samsas med vapenexport, där övergrepp sker samtidigt som folk blundar och dricker sitt kaffe. Vi vill bryta ner gränser i ett land som alltmer stänger sina. Vi är som ett ogräs som växer upp ur en utsugningskultur maskerad som ett harmlöst konsumtionssamhälle.

Arrangeras av Wormgod & Panora/Folkets Bio, i samarbete med ABF Malmö.

 

Piracy is Liberation 007: Spiders pt 1. Coming soon from Wormgod!

The new Piracy is Liberation book 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…

Piracy is Liberation and the Media.

So I’ve written a bit about feminism and collectivity in the world of Piracy is Liberation now. Thought I’d talk a bit about media too.

I’d like to start by paraphrasing Frank Herbert:

Television is the mind-killer.

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
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).

So, another paraphrase:

Death to Television! Long live the new flesh!