TMC Talk #4: Roope Eronen
I met Roope Eronen, Amanda Vähämäki and their kids at the Fanzines! Festival in Paris last year. I was extremely excited since my favorite comics are from finland. We had a table together and went out with the whole Fanzines! team every night where we had a ton of fun talking about comics, beer and puke. Roope drew some of my favorite comic books such as 'KOIRANKAKKAA', 'ELÄIMIÄ' and 'OFFICES & HUMANS' which are published by Huuda Huuda. Papier Gache recently released 'Foxette', a great comic that came with a cassette Roope recorded. I can't believe our luck: Roope is going to come to Leipzig for the TMC 2014!
You are one of the comic artists from the KUTI KUTI crew which brought finnish comics into an international focus. Can you tell us a little bit about the 'Kuti Kuti Story' and how it is working for you today?
Kutikuti started in 2005 first as a studio of about 7 comic artists. 2006 we started also to publish the free comics tabloid Kuti, from which we are best known about. Around same time Kutikuti started to organize exhibitions, and started to be more and more like a collective. Later we also bought a silk screening machine, but the seri-studio or ours was never succesful. No one had the time the machine would have needed. So we sold it, and now we have very small facilities for printing. We hope to get to print a lot with them in the future. Kutikuti was a studio until about 2011, and we moved a couple of times. But around 2011 we had about 15 people in our studio and it was too much mess etc. So we quit being a studio, and moved to a few different studios (now we are all slowly packing in one of them again...), and Kutikuti started to be more like an association. Now we are going to renovate that association to a more open and professional association and agenture. I think there are now about 20-25 people in Kutikuti.
How come finnish comics are so wild and awesome? Maybe because of the social security system... You can afford to be an artist in Finland because you can still get support from the state if you're poor. It's not too nice life with all the bureaucracy but it's still possible to live without a real job. I don't know how it's going to be in ten years, probably it won't be so easy to be an artist anymore... But well, many comic artists have another job, so i don't know how come there are so many good authors here. We have quite sweet water, could it be that? Or then because we don't have so strong tradition's weight on us.
Most of your characters are animals altering between cuteness and being shitty. Why do you chose to draw animals?
And do you have any idea why comics and animals are going so well together? It's probably a coincidence that I've drawn so many animal comics. I did a couple for the early issues of Kuti and then got more and more ideas for animal comics. Also people liked those comics and supported me to do more. Also I'm not too good in drawing people, but I'm learning! Well there's a long tradition in animal comics and animal stories overall. So it's deeply rooted in human culture. I think the animal characters are more universal and easier to use as more neutral figures to represent ideas. But I don't know if the wall painters in Lascaux thought it that way. Maybe they did?
You're very much into music, too. Can you tell us a little bit more about your own music? And what's the hottest stuff you're listening to right now? I'm playing improvised music at the moment with bands Avarus and Keijut. I used to play with bigger variety of instruments, but now I'm only playing synth. I'm not saying I'm master of any instrument, I'm actually not so good player in traditional way (but I'm learning!). But I've improvised a lot with these and some other bands. The bands' music has been mostly experimental free music, coming from nowhere and going anywhere. It's very hard to do it live, but super rewarding. Also in my solo shows I've wanted to have a big level of uncertainty and improvisation, getting myself to pretty uncomfortable situations. But when you manage to make great music in a situation like that it's incredible! On the other hand if you miss your train it can be frustrating, embarassing and depressing. I'm also making solo recordings as Nuslux at home, then I sometimes even make compositions. And sometimes I record some experiments. You can listen to some of these in Nuslux's soundcloud. Avarus is now playing almost weekly which makes me happy. I'm also super excited about Keijut, that's more bound to making audiovisual super experiences with light, projections, special effects and synths. I'm listening to a lot of music! Especially I like many kinds of electronic, experimental, psychedelic and free music. But lately I've been more and more into library music (Roger Roger, Nino Nardini, Fabio Fabor, A. Alessandroni, Joel VDB etc). Also I've enjoyed exotica a lot lately, especially Eden Ahbez which I've been listening to every day for a little while. Somehow I've begun to like easy listening too, more and more. Just two real nerdy questions at the end of this interview: what kind of pens and paper are you using?
And what's your favorite kind of beer in the world? I'm using almost any 0.3 - 0.5 mm black pens, brown Stabilos and Letrasets for colours (when colouring by hand). I'd like to learn how to use ink. I like many kinds of beer, but I'm most excited about Belgian ales. Thank you a ton, Roope! also check Roopes Flickr out KUTI KUTI is damn cool2!