How do comics save themselves? What are the modes of knowledge production and cultural transmission that shape the past of comics? Which means organize the inscription of comics in a longer temporal perspective? Futures of comics inevitably depend on the way they have been saved and preserved. While contemporary comics face new challenges in terms of their archival storage and distribution, within the large spectrum of a digital economy, the 1970s already grappled with related issues of reproduction technologies, access and circulation, storage and materiality. This talk will look at comics collecting less as a subcultural phenomenon than as an important episode in a larger history of Xeroxing, microfilm, public access, cultural policy, dematerialization, underground distribution — a narrative that is still largely ongoing in the digital context of whistleblowers and rogue archivists.
The talk will be held in English. Let us know in advance if you would like translating assistance in French or German.
Talk by
Benoît Crucifix (Belgium)
Date: Wednesday 1st, April 2020
Time: 16.00 – 17.30
Location: The Phrontistery
Address: Löwenpl. 6, 6004 Luzern, Switzerland
