Mattias Elftorp's Blog, page 13

2019 pt 1/3: personal works

Here’s my usual attempt to figure out what I’ve been doing this past year. Let’s start with my personal works. Is it less than usual? Feels like it should be, considering I’ve been working (almost) full time this year with Fanzineverkstaden. Somehow I seem to have still managed to do some stuff.

My processes differ a bit between working digitally and on paper. Here’s how it goes:

On paper:

I have something that needs drawing. I take out my tools, I sit down at the drawing table and draw the thing. When it’s good, I like the flow of it, the feel of steel nib on non-glossy paper, the random splotches of ink that can enhance or ruin (ruin, as in I have to do some postproduction in the compouter, which I always do anyway. However, there’s usually big risk that I stumble on the starting line and never even take out my tools, even less sit down at the table.

Digital:

I reach for the pad and start drawing. I miss the feel of pen on paper and the ability to see the whole page since I often zoom in while drawing. But it’s soo much easier to just get started, and so I’m more productive this way.

It’s a dilemma.

That said, this year I’ve worked almost exclusively in digital form, with the exception of some linocut and silkscreen prints.

Some of these were made for the CBK: LORE exhibition, and were also used for my only proper book project this year, After the Ends of the World 2, which I did with Susanne Johansson, my partner in Wormgod:

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Order it here.

[image error]I know I’ve posted this one before, so if you’ve seen it you can just scroll past it. Posting it here again because it was included in Asylkalendern 2019, this year published by Asylgruppen Malmö:

Buy it to support them and the immensely important work they do.

I thought the theme of genocide and how we deal with some of them in our history would work well for the occasion.

Linocut and silkscreen, made at Fanzineverkstaden:

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I’ve also made a couple of zines this year.

Hungr I made half asleep at the pre-party for Seriefest 2019:

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Encounter in the Woods I’ve written about earlier. It feels good to finally have something from that project in print, and in exhibition form:

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Sleep Paralysis, a cooperation with Kinga Dukaj, a remaster of the comic we made for CBA vol 47 (more on that in a later post). She had a dream that I put into writing and embellished a bit, using one of her photo manipulations to turn it into a visually abstract comic. I’m really happy with it, especially how it looks which I didn’t even make myself. It’s always nice to work with great art (which brings me back to the upcoming post about CBA vol 47, but more on that later as i said).

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I’ll end this post with one of the year’s last projects, which was a cassette tape cover I made for a split by Noise Against Fascism and Legion of Swine. It’ll be released January 9 in Copenhagen and in Malmö the day after. Only in 17 copies though, so it’ll be very exclusive…

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WINTER SALE!

50% off on all my Wormgod books in a big sale which also includes books from Tusen Serier and CBK, lasting Nov 29 – Jan 1.

Go to the Hybriden webshop and have a look!

We’ve also started putting up prints on the site, so you can find some of my stuff in that section as well. We’ll be adding to the prints some at a time during the coming weeks…

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We also spent some time recently putting up what remains of our old back-issues of C’est Bon (2001-2004) and C’est Bon Anthology (2004-2005) in the shop, in case you’re a completist or just curious. Those are also included in the sale.

And you can now see the complete list of artists published in any of the incarnations av CB/CBA in this list, complete with links to the books they’re included in at the shop. It’s 263 artists so far, including a whole bunch of extremely skilled ones. Looking at this list always makes me proud to have been involved in working with these books.

If you for some reason don’t care about anyone else and just want my stuff, here’s a direct link to that.

Skimming the Deep

The new issue of CBA is out! Vol 46: Deep is now available at the Hybriden webshop.

In spite of everything, I managed to make a comic for it, one that I called Skimming the deep.

Here are a few samples:

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Jaje

So I came back from Novo Doba two weeks ago and am still trying to acclimatize to the Swedish social climate. I’m not sure if Serbia is actually that much better or if it’s just the situation of the festival and Matrijaršija, with its combination of recurring guests and a view of art that is simultaneously more relaxed and more serious than what I’m used to from Sweden.

I’m sure some of it is just a lingering hangover and some of it is stress over deadlines and workload in general, but I’ve had to struggle with the feeling that maybe I should just fuck off from everything I do that’s not exclusively about my own personal gain. Because I’ve felt for a while that that’s what most people do and maybe I should let others taste that same medicine? Conform to the egotist norm? I don’t really want to be that kind of asshole, but it would be nice to have some space/time in my life to do some stuff for myself. I mean comics projects that are bigger than just a few hours’ worth of work, maybe some painting, some printing, some simple drawings. Sure, I started playing Metal Gear Solid 4 and I’m enjoying it and everything BUT it also feels a lot like a desperate attempt at having some free time, rather than something I do simply for entertainment. And I never have that time because there are so many things I feel should get done, and no one else is doing them (except Kinga and me).

That said, through willpower, stubbornness and a very optimistic sense of how much you can do per hour, I’ve managed to get some stuff done lately…

For example, me and Kinga finally managed to use Fanzineverkstaden for some personal projects and made a serious attempt at silkscreen printing in preparation for Novo Doba and Gallerinatten (which was in the end of September).

This is an old illustration I did years ago for the Occupy Wall Street Journal (also published in an issue of Brand, I believe). Here printed in white on black A2 paper, and also on A3 in different colors:

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Part of our (Wormgod/CBK/Tusen Serier/Kinga Dukaj/Feberdröm) table at Novo Doba…

I also have a comic in the new CBA, but more on that later…

Exhibition + bookfair in Angered

On September 21, Tusen Serier will have a table at Angered’s bokmässa (with some stuff from CBK and Wormgod as well) in Gothenburg. I will do a presentation together with Amalia Alvarez who will also do one of her own.

And there will be an exhibition by me: Sagor från Angered, which showcases pages from a graohic novel I started working on with Amanda Casanellas in 2016. Hopefully, the book will actually be finished at some point, but that’s pretty far in the future, the way things look now.

So the best way to see at least parts of it will be this exhibition, and a zine version of one of its chapters, remastered to be a standalone story called Encounter in the woods, published by Tusen Serier in cooperation with Konstepidemin, Konsthallen Blå Stället and Kultur i Väst. The zine will be given away for free at Blå Stället, and we’ll also have some copies at Hybriden.

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COdA interview

Me and Suss were interviewed for an article about Wormgod in COdA #15 (the August edition of the zine), re: the release of After the ends of the world 2.

We also made one illustration each for the occasion. Here’s mine:

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The zine is free and you can download it to print it yourself. Instructions for how to fold it are included. Feel free to share it with anyone who might be interested.

CBAvol47 – Science/fiction: call for submissions

It’s time for me to be main editor of CBA again (last time was CBA vol 36|37: In the Pits of Madness). So send us your most interesting comics and/or texts on the following theme:

CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction

Science and fiction rule our lives. The laws of physics seem set in stone while the laws of man are arbitrary mirrors of the morality of the times. Gods and spirits are creations of the mind but also the explanation when comprehension fails. What lies beyond our understanding? Is it more science or something else? What dark forces lurk outside our field of vision? What machineries of death and destruction are we yet to invent in the name of money (which used to be metal and paper but is now to a great extent nothing but speculation and expectations)? What (or who) else meet in the intersection between science fiction and real science? What came first? The egg or the hatching machine?

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In CBA vol 47 – Science/Fiction, we explore the borderlands between science and fiction, in comics and text articles.

Main Editor: Mattias Elftorp

Deadline: November 1

—SUBMISSION GUIDELINES—

Please read and follow these guidelines:

Number of pages: We prefer comics that are about 5-30 pages, but any number is welcome.

Format: 20x26cm

Color: Color / Black and white

Language: English

File format: .TIF

Resolution: 1200 dpi line art or 300 dpi CMYK

Length (texts): A good size for a text is ca 7500 characters (including spaces), but it can also be longer or shorter.

Bleed: 5mm. Think you know how to handle bleed? Read this to make sure you know what we mean.

Within this space, there are no limits.

Delivery: We prefer download links that do NOT require us to login anywhere (wetransfer usually works fine, for example).

Request: Please don’t use Comic Sans. We don’t like it and will ask you to change to another font.

And again; Please check our guidelines for bleed.

Please send us high-resolution files from the start.

Include a short presentation text about yourself, with one URL (if you have a website or similar).

Please ask us if you are unsure about formats, resolution, bleed, etc. We prefer stupid questions to bad files. And there are no stupid questions!

Unfortunately we cannot offer you any payment for participating. If we publish your submission you will receive 10 free copies of the issue. That’s all we can offer at this time. Hopefully you will find being in CBA an enjoyable experience. Naturally, copyright for your material stays with you.

–ARTICLES AND COMICS GENERAL GUIDELINES–

What we are looking for is comics which rely on artistic ambitions and a will to experiment rather than what has been done a thousand times before. We want to expand the boundaries of what is possible to achieve in the comics medium. We are looking for the same thing in texts; articles, essays, exploratory texts, etc. Use your imagination, and have fun! : – )

Send your comics to: submissions [at] cbkcomics [dot] com

OUT NOW: After the ends of the world 2

My latest book is a collaboration between me and Susanne Johansson of Wormgod, and also includes a soundtrack.

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Once more we explore the different ways the world ended. From a hindsight perspective we delve into various scenarios to pinpoint the details of the apocalypse.

Comics and illustrated texts from the minds behind Wormgod, a roadmap of things to navigate to come out on the other side of the future. Also a furious description of the world we live and die in now, with all its horrors.

You can buy the book here!

The soundtrack features:

SYSTEMET

NIMAM SPREGLEDA

FACTORY FARMING

TRAUMA COMMAND

FEBERDRÖM

KOEFF

You can listen to the KOEFF track on YouTube.

Both the SYSTEMET and TRAUMA COMMAND track are live recordings from last year’s TRAUMA, for those of you who missed or want to relive it.

And here’s a taste of some of my one-page illustrations/stories:

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CBK: Qtopia

Right now, Hybriden is showing an exhibition of the latest volume of CBA.

The theme is Qtopia:

So many LGBTQ narratives end in tragedy as a consequence of the LGBTQ-hood of the characters. Those stories are important because LGBTQ people are still being targeted by prejudice, discrimination and violence, but in this volume of CBA we encouraged artists to do something different. To tell queer stories where the queerness isn’t a narrative catalyst for bad things, but rathera source for joy or love or just one characteristic among others.

Queer tales about situations involving LGBTQ characters. Utopian queer tales in the sense that everything might not be perfect, but at least the horrible things that happen don’t have anything to do with the characters’ sexual orientation.

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My contribution to this volume is the left-hand side of the cover spread, which was a collaboration by a bunch of us in the CBK crew: Kinga Dukaj (idea + coloring), Luddvig Melin, Lisa Örtlund, Henrik Rogowski and me.

Go check out the exhibition at Hybriden, and/or buy the book at our webshop!

CRACK! 2019 + some recent stuff

I’m soon going on vacation, this weird concept that you get when you have employment, where you spend some time not working at all. Employment is rare for me, so it still feels like some kind of novelty. And it won’t be completely without work since we have a CBA release/exhibition on July19 (work being defined as when you do things with a purpose other than pleasure/relaxation, not to be confused with employment where you also get paid).

So I thought I should make some small summation of what I’ve beem doing lately. I should say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ since most of what I do is done in the context of one or more of the collectives I’m part of within the Hybriden constellation…

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Let’s start at the chronological end, with this year’s CRACK! festival (June 20-23) where I was with Kinga Dukaj and Luddvig Melin to represent AltCom/Hybriden/Wormgod/CBK/Tusen Serier and ourselves as artists. If you don’t know, this is one that I’ve been going to every year for the last decade or so, except last year. Which was probably good, because this time it felt better than it has for a while. Less people than usual, but I got some of that magic back, where you meet new people who do interesting stuff, old friends that you only see once or a few times a year (depending on which festivals you go to) who also do interesting stuff, you see lots of cool art, you make some yourself, you’re in this small piece of a possible future/squat paradise on earth called Forte Prenestino to share in the evolution of the comics/printed art underground. It’s a source of inspiration for AltCom and for a lot of what I do and how I do it.

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Idyllic breakfast with background reminder…

Our cell:

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The theme for this year was APERTO (OPEN), similar to the NO BORDERS theme of AltCom 2012, so that fit us well considering what we’re usually publishing.

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One of our neighboring cells

On June 22 there was also a huge demonstration against evictions of squats as well as against raised rents in general. CRACK! has a natural connection to this since Forte Prenestino is a squat since 1986. I didn’t go to the demo myself because I can’t handle being out in the Italian heat for that long, but rumor says it was a manifestation of around 100 000 people.

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I was asked to make a sticker or something for the demo, but I found this and couldn’t imagine doing it any better.

I also have to say, without going into details, that the crisis management from the festival organizers is very commendable. They managed to turn an incident into an assembly of around a hundred artists to discuss what had happened. In the end some people disrupted the meeting and I’m not sure where they will go from where it ended, but I fully trust them to handle it in an intelligent way that is respectful to many different aspects of the whole situation.

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A while ago, we opened a new permanent exhibition at Hybriden, with works that have been produced at Fanzineverkstaden by its members and/or workshop participants. It was also, finally, the official release event for Fosfor, our zine distribution system.

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The Lore exhibition is still up, with material related to the theme of the latest issue of CBA. The best bet if you still haven’t seen it is to go this week (Wed-Fri 11-15 + Sun 12-15). After that, Hybriden will close for the summer except for the opening of the Qtopia exhibition on July 19 (at Hybriden). As I write this, we’re actually in the final stages of finishing to files for CBA vol 45: Qtopia to send off to the printer.

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We’ll be back in August at Fanzineverkstaden, open weekdays between 15-21, with lots of new workshops coming up during the fall, so keep an eye open for that. And do use the place, because it’s a great opportunity to print stuff and try some new ways for self-publishing, and you never know how long it’ll last (except we know we’ll be here for at least another year). We also brought home some examples from CRACK! to use for inspiration.

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And speaking of things that are being printed as we speak… My contributions to the upcoming Wormgod book, After the ends of the world 2 by me and Susanne Johansson, have largely been produced at Fanzineverkstaden in between my regular working hours. More on that later, but here are a few of the pages from the book that I also showed as prints at CRACK!

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