kim jooha

with Francesc Ruiz. A Room of One’s Own: Lily Indie Press. 2020. Installation. Busan Biennale. South Korea. 

— Collaborated on research & worked on translation

Official Description from Busan Biennale 2020:

I wrote about Syvia Nickerson's Creation (2019), a meditation on the city and its inhabitants and how both shape each other, and Lala Albert's Seasonal Shift (2019), a collection of sci-fi comics that are more realistic than our realities for DAMN 75 Winter 2020 "Overload" issue.

I focused on their depiction of the affect* of contemporary society’s obsession with technological and economic development on our—especially women’s—lives. This affect is manifested as transformed bodies and leads to the identity crisis in both works.

(*Affect is a thing before emotion. Emotion has a name, but affect is nameless and ambivalent. Emotion is actual, but affect is virtual. According to Brian Massumi’s “The Anatomy of Affect”)

Lala Albert's Seasonal Shift

Finally, I suggested that comics, especially women’s comics like Creation and Seasonal Shift, could be the force for positive change. In her seminal essay A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the late 20th century, Donna Haraway proclaimed the power of women’s stories that subvert the realities of women as cyborgs in a society overloaded with an obsession for technological and economic development. Although cyborgs are born from “control on the planet [and] ... appropriation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war,” they have the power to undermine the misogynist world. For women, "Survival is the stakes", as Seasonal Shift and Creation show.

p.s. Of course, we could expand the last paragraph's thesis to include the intersectionality of race, sexuality, gender, nationality, etc.

I guest edited The 4PANEL Project for CAROUSEL Magazine 42 (Winter 2019/20). Here they are, all from 4panel.ca:

Margaux Duseigneur 

François Henninger 

Laurence Lagier 

Lomé Lu 

Manuel

Caroline Sury 

Huh Hyunjung 

Jeong Wonkyo

ooo

Rantan 

Woo Younsik 

William Dereume  

Andrea Lukic 

Juli Majer 

Aeon Mute 

Counter Comics: like Counter Cinema, comics that strive to unravel the ideology behind comics. 

Ilan Manouach ( one / two )

Stefanie Leinhos

Christmas in Prison by Conor Stechschulte

”Early Comics as Comics of Attraction: Society is Nix & Forgotten Fantasy and The Temple of Silence”, Best Comics of the Decade @ Solrad

We tend to read history as teleological. We view early comics as a precursor for later serialized narratives and/or character focused comic strips. We think of avant-garde (experimental and formal) and narrative (and/or character) focused work as a dichotomy. We look for exceptional genii like Little Nemo in Slumberland’s Winsor McCay and The Kinder-Kids’s Lyonel Feininger. These gorgeous reprints show that we were wrong. 

A lot of early comics exploited the introduction of colours on the large newspaper pages. Indeed, that was why comics were born in the first place. A lot of early comics experimented with the formal qualities of comics, too. Since it was the beginning of the new medium, there were fast turnouts, therefore low risk, and there was no set formula. There was also a lot of influence from other visual arts. 

“Against the List”

Lale Westvind’s Comics of the Visceral

Jillian Tamaki: the Artist of the Decade

Patrick Kyle’s Navigating Space Comics

Ilan Manouach’s Counter Comics

Francesc Ruiz: Subverting Low Art of Comics

Deskilled Comics of Mushbuh and Char Esme & Ben Mendelewicz

Mushbuh

Char Esme

Ben Mendelewicz

Gina Wynbrandt: Funny Ugly Girl Comics in the Post-Digital Age

Aidan Koch’s Negative Symbolic Space

Margot Ferrick’s Comics of Affect

Tillie Walden: Dream of Queer Girl Popular Culture Coming True

Aurélie William Levaux’s Embroidery Comics

Spatiality of Rantan’s Unruly Women

Early Comics as Comics of Attraction: Society is Nix & Forgotten Fantasy and The Temple of Silence

Reprints of Women’s Comics: (Re)publishing is the Act of (Re)writing History

Julie Doucet, The Complete Dirty Plotte (2018) Fiona Smyth, Somnambulance (2018) Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Love That Bunch (2018) Jenny Zervakis, The Complete Strange Growths: 1991-1997 (2017) Katerine Collins, The Collected Neil the Horse (2017) Nicole Claveloux, The Green Hand and Other Stories (2017) Sullen Rocca (2016) The Complete Wimmen’s Comix (2016) Dame Darcy, The Meat Cake Bible (2016) Sylvie Rancourt, Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer (2015) M.K. Brown, Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970-2013 (2014) Dorothy Iannone: You Who Read Me with Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends (2014) Diane Noomin, Glitz-2-Go (2012) Tarpe Mills, Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays (2011) It is Almost That: A Collection of Image + Text Work by Women Artists & Writers (2011) 이진경, 사춘기 (2017), & more.

Super-structure: the Anthology of the Decade

I will expound on some ideas I introduced in my Best Comics of the Decade list in the following series of posts. 

(Re)publishing is the act of writing history. While the reprint renaissance began in the 00s, it is only in this decade that several prominent women cartoonists’ works got reprinted. Even then, there are glaring omissions ... For example, most of the 70s female Underground Comix that reflected not only the gross misogyny in the field but also the wider cultural influence of Women’s Liberation, or the second wave of feminism, are not reprinted. A lot of women-only anthologies of the 90s that were influenced by the contemporaneous Riot Grrrl and zine culture, or the third wave feminism, are not written in comics history. ... The history of comics is not the objective truth. We are (re) writing the history every minute ...

— "Reprints of Women Artists: (Re)publishing is the Act of Writing a History", Best Comics of the Decade @ Solrad

Julie Doucet, The Complete Dirty Plotte. Drawn & Quarterly (2018)

Fiona Smyth, Somnambulance. Koyama Press (2018)

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Love That Bunch. Drawn & Quarterly (2018)

Jenny Zervakis, The Complete Strange Growths: 1991-1997. Spit and a Half (2017)

Katerine Collins, The Collected Neil the Horse. Conundrum Press (2017)

Nicole Claveloux, The Green Hand and Other Stories. New York Review Comics (2017)

Sullen Rocca (2016)

The Complete Wimmen’s Comix. Fantagraphics (2016)

Dame Darcy, The Meat Cake Bible. Fantagraphics (2016)

Sylvie Rancourt, Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer. Drawn & Quarterly (2015)

M.K. Brown, Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970-2013. Fantagraphics (2014) 

Dorothy Iannone: You Who Read Me with Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends. Siglio Press (2014)

Diane Noomin, Glitz-2-Go. Fantagraphics (2012)

Tarpe Mills, Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays. IDW (2011)

It is Almost That: A Collection of Image + Text Work by Women Artists & Writers. Siglio Press (2011)

At Fumetto International Comic Festival 2019 in Luzern, Switzerland, I installed an exhibition / public library of Canadian comics; held four talks with reading and discussion sessions; and gave a talk at the symposium. It was part of Futures of Comics, one of ten main programmes of the festival, directed by Ilan Manouach; and curated by Manouach and Jana Jakoubek, the festival artistic director. Francesc Ruiz, Aarthi Parthasarathy, Guillaume Dumora, and Josh O’Neil also took part in the edition of Futures of Comics. The Phrontistery hosted the programme. 

Talks

“Appropriation / Collage / Comics: From Sources to Subjects”

“Notes on Deskilled/Ugly Comics”

“Feminist Critiques of Comics Histor(iograph)y” 

“On Trans/National Comics: the Canadian Case”

“An Elegy For Comics”. Futures of Comics Symposium. 

List of Canadian comics exhibited: 

Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell

Undocumented by Tings Chak 

Hellberta by Michael Comeau

Rudy by Mark Connery, edited by Marc Bell

Leaving Richard’s Valley by Michael DeForge

REAKER UNTLD IV by DDOOGG

Carpet Sweeper Tales by Julie Doucet

Fluorescent Mud by Eli Howey

Climb-ing Mushrooms Fabric Zine by Ginette Lapalme

Meow Means Hi by Ginette Lapalme, Mark Connery, and Zuzu Knew 

Roaming Foliage by Patrick Kyle 

Hey, I don’t mean to be condescending or anything, but we’re friends, you don’t have to be afraid of me by Victor Martins

Sprawling Heart by Sab Meynert 

Flash Marks by Carel Moiseiwistch 

310,310 and 978-91-87325-43-4 by Mushbuh 

Nexus by Aeon Mute

Red Rainbow and It’s Time to Wake Up Now by Hue Nguyen

Somnambulance by Fiona Smyth

Boundless by Jillian Tamaki 

The Palace of Champions by Henriette Valium

Condo Heartbreak Disco by Eric Kostiuk Williams

Magical Beatdown by Jenn Woodall

Seasons of Butterfly by Kendra Yee

Karissa Sakumoto, Endman (2019)

Mushbuh, 310,310 (2017)

I have a new essay for LAAB Magazine #4: This Was Your Life!, titled Comics as the Language of Post-Digital: Deskilled Comics and Meme as Vernacular Comics. LAAB Magazine is one of my favourite space for comics discourse and it was an honour to be asked to participate in. 

This is one of my favourite essays I have written. It is about Deskilled Comics, intentionally poorly drawn comics, and:

Deskilled Comics and their characteristics in both art comics world and broader general post-digital visual culture

Why Deskilled Comics are preeminent forms of post-digital visual culture

Paper Rad as the precedent of everything post-digital

Meme as Vernacular Comics of post-digital

Comics as the language of post-digital: memes, emojis, Instagram, etc.

Now comics are much bigger than anyone has ever imagined and we need to ask different questions. For example:

Meme makes “The Death of the Author” a reality and eliminates the distinction between original and reproduction. What does it mean to make art when being original and/or an artist means nothing?

Meme and Deskilled Comics are a kind of camp for post-digital age. Their mechanism of humour of distancing makes them easy tools for radicalization. What does it imply for comics and comics community that comics are used to kill people? 

and more. Get LAAB Magazine #4: This Was Your Life! to read the essay. 

I have a new essay in The Comics Journal 304 about Ilan Manouach’s conceptual comics: Katz (2011) and MetaKatz (2011) from Maus and MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman, 

Noirs (2014) from Les Schtroumpfs Noirs by Peyo, Tintin Akei Kongo (2015) from Tintin au Congo by Herge, 

Un monde un peu meilleur (2018) from Un monde un peu meilleur by Lewis Trondheim. 

Manouach’s appropriation works disclose the ideologies behind mainstream and “alternative” comics, even seemingly apolitical features like technology (color or formatting) or style of comics. 

I wrote about Vincent Fortemps’ Barques for DAMN°72:

Vincent Fortemps says that his practice is more of a sculpture than a drawing. Fortemps draws on both sides of transparent rhodoid sheet with a black lithographic crayon and scratches the sheet with a knife. 

Barques (2007) is the shortest and smallest among his oeuvre, but shows Fortemps’ singular attention to the physical materiality and ontology of images in the most poetic way.

Barques reveals the illusion of representation in comics – continuity, time, movement, original material – while appreciating the ambiguity and diversity it creates.

My new essay "Ilan Manouach’s Shapereader: The Visual Question" is out on DAMN°, a Belgian quarterly art & design magazine, issue 71:

Shapereader is a tactile comic for the visually impaired. It exposes the inherent limitation of visual media/art: it excludes blind people. Shapereader also asks: what is the ‘visual’ in visual media/art if we can perceive it without seeing it? Shapereader challenges the privilege of the eye by showing that there is no pure visual perception and media/art. 

Shapereader is Manouach’s call and action for more diverse and inclusive aesthetic experiences, and the imagination and realization of such a possibility.

Alexis Beauclair is one of the best artists in contemporary European art comics. Beauclair’s immaculate minimalist works are the epitome of French Structural Comics. I edited his first collection Vanishing Perspective (2dcloud, 2018) and interviewed him for the publication.

How would you describe, define, or categorize the comics you make? Abstract comics?

I would like to say minimalism. Most of the time I try to refine as much as possible, to deal with the simplest parameters, with the pure mechanics of the comics form and to conduct experiments.

But I keep a certain classic comics codes: there are panels, and the reading is linear (even if I like to play with the entire page). I feel what I’m doing is more like an archeological search for the very roots of this sequential language.

I like when things are between the abstract and the figurative and when figures come to surface to play with this in-between.Humans are designed (and/or acculturated?) to see signs, to try to decrypt reality so with just a little bit of information they can link things and understand some logic. I’m fascinated by this process and love to question it.

Globe, 2008

What inspired you to develop a “minimalist“ style? Did you know previous so-called “abstract comics“ when you started yours?

No, I didn’t know the few experiments that had been done at the time, when I started my first minimalist project (Globe, 2008). I was thinking, “It’s unbelievable that nobody has ever done it yet! Why did the comics form wait so long to liberate itself from literature or illustration“ I dived into it intuitively. My first and biggest inspirations are maybe (adventures) comics in general that I had read, like Spirou or Tintin. For me, it’s about movement. Each comic book is a rush forward; the reader is led by the character walking, running, jumping, falling (ok they are also talking) within landscapes. And this movement doesn’t exist on its own like in the cinema. The movement is created by reading. And reading is a movement.

So I try to find what kind of energy drives comics beneath all the artifices (characters, stories, and anecdotes). Distill the comic to the maximum to reach its essence: movement.

What I love is composing images with shapes and lines so that the reader can decrypt these signs and imagine or feel the movement. Nothing exists without the reader; s/he is active; s/he projects her or his own experience into the life of movement; s/he applies physical laws to fixed images printed on paper.

I’m enchanted by this mental exercise. To associate images, to combine signs, to question them and drive drawings toward abstraction as if they were an imaginary language.

Labyrinth, 2014

The comics in this collection were originally published independently. What made you collect them together?

This collection focuses on my self-published line drawing-based minimalist comics. These comics are part of one body of research. The collection is in chronological order. It progresses from minimal figuration to non-figurative imagery, almost abstraction!

Photon, 2014

Photon is a simple progress through a corridor-like object; Labyrinth is just a minimal corridor of lines but with disorienting turns; Vanishing Perspective starts with minimal perspective, vanishes to just moving lines, and evokes minimal stories; and Sol is about the movement of multiples lines, a hypnotic end.

Vanishing Perspective, 2015

Sol is the most recent work from the collection. You mentioned that it’s an homage to Sol LeWitt. Why Sol LeWitt?

I was a Sol LeWitt fan, but I hadn’t seen his wall drawings in exhibition — only in books — before I saw them at MASS MoCA two years ago. The show blew my mind.

As I like to experiment with simple drawings elements I wanted to experiment with multiple lines. So when I got back to France, I decided to do a tribute to him, using his famous patterns.

I did a simple thing to adapt it to comic form. I changed the order of LeWitt’s patterns (vertical, horizontal, diagonal rising, diagonal descending). My goal was to create movement as lines rotated (vertical, diagonal rising, horizontal, diagonal descending = clockwise). That is the cover page.

Next, I played with the possibilities offered by these patterns and also with geometry. For example, when vertical lines turn on a diagonal axis, the lines become closer to each other.

So this is ideas of one or a few pages. The reader is invited to decrypt the rules involved, or just feel movement, or optical sensations.

Jennifer Bartlett, Rhapsody (1975)

Beginning in The Comics Journal #303, I write a column called Expanded Comics. 

I suggest to see comics as a part of Visual Communication Systems that have existed since the dawn of humanity across every culture, such as Illuminated Manuscripts, Mesoamerican Codices, Bayeux thread, Chinese Lianhua, Dongba symbols, pictograms, infographics, artist books, serial paintings, paintings and drawings with words, multi-screen films, picture books, collages, Charlotte Solomon’s Life or Theatre, David Shrigley’s drawings, etc.

Expanded Comics is a comics-centric way of calling these Visual Communication Systems that can be viewed as comics or comics-like objects regardless of the intention of the creator. 

Drawing the definitive boundary of comics is arbitrary, artificial, and ultimately impossible because these Visual communication Systems are diverse. For example, Sol LeWitt’s artist books and Jennifer Bartlett’s Rhapsody can be read as comics as I argued. 

Moreover, many artists and cartoonists study same questions. For instance, Aidan Koch (Rabbit’s Rebirth and Translation), Lars Arrhenius (A-Z), bpNichols, and Henri Michaux all study the universality of Visual Communication System or Expanded Comics. Besides, comics and other visual arts are produced, distributed, and received by the same people more and more. 

The goal of Expanded Comics is to diversify the production, distribution, reception, and discourse of comics and to highlight the potential of comics’ diversity. 

Please read the column for the expanded arguments. 

Talco Ilgi [Talco Diary] depicts a South Korean woman rebelling against the strict standard of female beauty in South Korea by shaving her hair and refusing to wear “girl clothes” and the misogynist society against her. “Tal-co”, an abbreviation of Tal-corset [Escaping the corset], is such act of contemporary South Korean feminist movement.

While being the most educated in the world, South Korean women suffer the enormous sexism. South Korea is most misogynic country among industrially developed country (its neighbor Japan is the next). Its gender pay gap is the biggest, violence against women is the most common, and political power of women is the least among OECD countries. Abortion is illegal. Spy-cam is everywhere, especially in public washrooms. Just as its K-beauty and K-pop are enormously popular worldwide (especially in Asia), its impossible beauty standard is enforced to women. If you do not fit the specific female beauty standard, you are ugly and thus you cannot get a job. You need to get plastic surgeries to get a job, only to get fired after pregnancy.

For the last few years, similar to the West, South Korea saw the reemergence of the feminist movement mostly through social media. Because comics, especially webcomics (called Webtoon), are one of the most popular entertainment in South Korea, the new feminist movement influences many artists and audiences. Sadly mainstream publishers (Line, Kakao, or Lezhin) are male-centric and slow to adapt to social change, but thanks to the development of the crowd-funding tools like Kickstarter, influential and popular feminist-themed comics by women artists can make money. The Talco Diary crowd-funder reached 150K USD only about a week after the launch and became the most funded project ever. 

South Korean misogyny is deep and systemic. However, our passion for equality is only stronger.

Originally on Your Chicken Enemy for the Best Comics of 2018

Articles on “Tal-co” and the new Korean feminist movement. 

'Escape the corset': South Korean women rebel against strict beauty standards. The Guardian 

South Korea Loves Plastic Surgery and Makeup. Some Women Want to Change That. The New York Times

South Korean Women v the Patriarchy. The Economist

Why women in South Korea are cutting ‘the corset’. BBC News

Why a new generation of women are challenging South Korea's beauty standards. i-D Vice

I argued that:

Exploiting the form and the mechanism of comics, Conor Stechschulte interrogates the most rooted assumption of comics reading in Christmas in Prison. 

Christmas in Prison asks if the narrative of comics is an illusion that the voyeuristic reader looks for and carves out of manufactured memories of discrete images. An illusion which is a dream.