Ben Katchor on the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium.
What is the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium?
It’s a weekly lecture series about comics, animation, illustration and other text-image work. Speakers include practitioners, publishers, and historians.
What inspired the creation of the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium?
It started as a class that I organized for the Occupy University — a free university started during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. For a few years, it became the lecture series of the Illustration program at Parsons The New School where I teach. Over the past year, it’s become an independent lecture series, funded, in part, by the Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation.
As an artist yourself, how has the symposium affected how you view your own work? Is there anything surprising that you've learned?
The series has allowed to me to keep somewhat up-to-date on developments within the alternative comics scene and that gives me a sense of where my own work sits in the larger history of comics. I’m always surprised at how small the audience is for historians of text-image work. For me, the understanding and unearthing of early text-image work is fascinating — it offers an alternative history of art and literature.
One of the objectives of the symposium is to "examine new ideas for the distribution of print and electronic work that move beyond the existing models of publishing and advertising." What are some creative ways the symposium has found to do so?
Discussions of how to find an audience within traditional publishing and new, emerging models are part of most evenings. Many of the speakers are involved in alternative publishing models but, so far, no clear, self-sustaining, alternative model has developed. These issues are tied to the larger questions of government, or other, subsidies for the arts and education — and that’s moving backwards in the US.
How can people outside of NYC get involved?
During the pandemic, the talks have moved online and so they’re accessible to listeners around the world. Recordings of the past year’s lectures are on Youtube here.
Talks will continue online during the fall of 2021.
You can read more about the Comics Symposium here and join an email list for upcoming events here.
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