Upcoming appearances…

Added some stuff to the world tour schedule:

July 11: Hacknight, Utkanten Malmö, Sweden
and
September 19: Wormgod: Zombies @ Malmö Queer Art & Film Festival, Panora, Malmö, Sweden

The first one is a hacker festival at Utkanten in Malmö, where I will talk a bit about Piracy is Liberation.

The second one will be some kind of talk about the Wormgod: ZOMBIES project, which is still very much in the future at this point, held by me and Suss. This will be in cinjunction with the showing of Bruce LaBruce’s film Otto or Up With Dead People, so we’ll probably talk a bit about that one too. More info about all this will come later at Panora‘s website.

And, of course, no one interested in Piracy is Liberation, Wormgod or extreme music should miss the party this Saturday at Utkanten!

See you there!

After Crack! 2009…

So. The Crack! report.

I can’t get rid of the question: “Why isn’t it always like this?” The Crack festival takes place at a squatted fortress in Rome and it’s the most creative and energetic comics festival I’ve ever been to. The organizers keep it open for (more or less) anyone who feel that they belong there to contribute and it’s more about creating exhibitions than just selling books.

This year I was there with Johan Jergner-Ekervik for CBK and we didn’t really know what to expect. We also had no time to prepare anything, what with the trip to New York and everything, so we simply brought books to sell and improvised an exhibition by sacrificing a copy of CBAvol7. Next time will be different. I’m sure CBK will be better prepared, and hopefully I’ll be able to come with Suss and make a Wormgod exhibition.

fortskiss

Anyway. While I was there, I got the feeling that this is how it should be done. Don’t get me wrong. I liked the MoCCA fextival and the others I go to, but they are all totally different from this. This is more like a music festval. You get up, sit in the grass for some hours with your breakfast beers and then everything starts at 18 and keeps going until late in the night, or sometimes the next day. Intoxicated people looking at art and comics. Loads of punk dogs. And good company from different places that aren’t sweden, which is always nice. Only setback was the lack of people speaking english (hence not being able to read our books). I always kind of interpret that as a sort of racism. An uninterest in being able to communicate with people outside your own language zone.

And so it got me thinking. Why isn’t it always like this? Why am I more and more losing interest in swedish comics culture, even as things are starting to change? And why is it that some interesting comics artists that I know here have lost interest in the medium, mainly because thay don’t feel at home in the dominant social culture of the swedish alternative comics scene? A scene where I’ve been hoping to have a home, but for some time now I’ve been losing that hope. Which may be just as well. I guess I’ll just have to move to Portugal or something.

Until then, I’ll settle for concentrating on Wormgod and Piracy is Liberation. Finding new audiences, doing new things. This morning I started planning for the Wormgod exhibition at next year’s Crack! festival. I look forward to it already.

And before the end of July I plan to have made another Piracy is Liberation book, a short comic for C’est Bon Anthology and at least one more image (after the one I’m working on right now) for an upcoming Wormgod exhibition (at Panora in August).

Happy Family of ultraViolence (Wormgod)

Working on the Wormgod exhibition for the Piracy is Liberation 006: Violence releaseparty at Utkanten, July 4…

This is a detail of my part of the new image and it will probably change a bit before we’re done, but I still thought it’d be nice to show…

Våld detail

This will be the second Wormgod exhibition. It’s called Våld (Violence) and will be an expansion on the first one, Konsekvens.

Information about the release party can be found at the Piracy is Liberation website or on Facebook.

After MoCCA: Comment from Becky Cloonan

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…

Piracy is Liberation 007-011.

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.

MoCCA 2009: Pillowtalk…

Just got home from The Great Satan, after a really good time spent in its capital city, New York City.

Second time at the MoCCA festival, and it was great, both at and around the festival itself. I spoke to a lot of interesting people, found a lot of interesting stuff, traded books and looked for artists for CBA. And found some new readers for Piracy is Liberation, I believe.

I participated at a panel on scandinavian comics, together with Åsa Ekström and an assortment of people working with comics from the other nordic countries. We had a good talk. As it turns out, we all had some prejudices about the other scandinavian countries, and we all seemed to agree that they were more or less true. Things are changing though, especially in sweden. The more internationally oriented we get, the more interesting stuff seem to be coming out. The new generation of swedish artists read more internationl comics, and want to do more internationally relevant comics. Be it manga, cyberpunk or horror comics, I see a brighter future.

me_nyc09

The festival was nice, but it was also nice to do a bit less of the touristy stuff in New York City this time. Staying in Queens helped. Riding on a subway where you hear more spanish and chinese than english makes it feel more like home, somehow. Spent some time in Astoria too, which was more or less the high point of the trip. All in all, the Great Satan is growing on me.

Oh, and Piracy is Liberation books 001-006 are now available at Blue Stockings bookstore in the lower east side, at 172 Allen Street.

Piracy is Liberation 006: Violence release|NOISEKVÄLL|utställning

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 exhibition with a sequence from the book of the same name. : VÅLD

006partyposter

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.

This event is arranged by Wormgod with the support by C’est Bon Kultur.

If you’re on Facebook, here’s the event.

And here’s a video from the Concrete Threat gig at the Piracy005 release party:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MVmkB-cBnM]