much – seminar spring 2025. Always on a Friday between 12.00-15.00. Location: NIC0505-K3 studio. Niagara-building, Malmö.
We begin with lunch at 12.00, where you have the opportunity to present and discuss ongoing work, plans and ideas (bring your own lunch), followed by a seminar that starts at 13.15.
17/1. Comic Studies at K3: The road ahead.
Jakob F. Dittmar, Malmö University.
This meeting is divided into two parts:
The first part will discuss potential developments of the current and future courses on the comics cluster at K3. We will look into possible modularization of some aspects as well as into a clearer progression of courses, including more explicit collaboration with other areas.
The second part will discuss the need for comics terminology and definitions in the international context of academic comics research. As examples, recent contributions to the discussion of “graphic novel” and “one-panel comics” will be briefly presented by Jakob Dittmar. The discussion can continue on these cases but also widen into a more general look at comics terminology and related confusions and contradictions.
Jakob Dittmar will also present the new and 3d. edition of his book Comics-Analyse (Herbert von Halem Verlag) that will be published during the spring.
14/2. Danske tegneserier i en brydningstid
Charlotte J. Fabricius, Syddansk Universitet
Danske tegneserier er mere talrige, mangfoldige og kritikerroste end nogensinde før. Alligevel kæmper langt hovedparten af danske tegneserieskabere med at tjene penge på deres kunstneriske virke. I dette oplæg vil jeg diskutere et potentielt fremtidigt forskningsprojekt, der skal undersøges danske tegneserieskaberes vilkår og den danske tegneseriebranche med fokus på tre overordnede tendenser: institutionalisering, digitalisering og internationalisering.
14/3. Solidaroperan – en experimentell framställning i risografiskt tryck
Gunnar Krantz, Malmö universitet.
Solidaroperan är en tecknad serie i storformat (A2), som är framställd i risografiskt tryck. Arbetet ingår i forskningsprojektet Autografisk dubbelexponering – den tuschade svarta linjens betydelse i tecknade serier. Serien prövar att utifrån tryckteknikens möjlighet, skapa ett narrativ som gestaltar den kooperativa folkrörelsen Solidar under 100 år. Seminarium i K3 Open Space på Niagara.
25/4. Seminarium. Making Archival Material Talk, adapting historic narrations in comics
Jakob Dittmar, Anders Høg Hansen, Malmö University
This seminar is going to discuss uses and approaches to archival material for producing documentary comics with a history or memory-focus.
In remediating different histories, simplification practices in history-telling are at work. The biggest challenge in re-telling the past is to achieve its representation without a mystification caused by gross simplifications. In current debate, these simplifications in post-colonial / de-colonial theory are quite apparent even in topics that seem not to relate to just these theories. While there are many possible voices in the archival material and other representations on each individual topic, only selected voices are actually expressed in the re-telling. Reasons for the selection of material, topics, positions and voices, have been many and have changed over time according to social, political, and academic norms and interests.
As a method to gain more advanced insights into the process of adaptation and storytelling, we propose a combination of established academic methods with artistic research. Starting from analysingcurrent German authored comics dealing with German memory and history (Dittmar and Høg Hansen, 2024), we discuss material from our comics courses and from own experiments. On our courses on ”Journalistic and documentary comics” we have established exercises to train our students in handling archival material and to explain a topic in its historic context employing and selecting relevant aspects to explain the history of a place with the help of, e.g., artefacts, press clippings, photography. The challenges encountered in these exercises show a need to understand better the underlying challenges and processes. With the help of experiences from these courses as well as our own re-telling of past events, we understand better the limits, challenges, and other factors that influence the adaptation, transformation, simplification, and myth-making of historic matters in the re-tellings of history by others.
9/5. Visit to Comics Garden Cafe, Copenhagen
Program: TBA
13/6. End of semester.
TBA