Hi there,
Today on the site, Josselin Moneyron talks to Kuš!’s David Schilter, along with his co-editor on the recent "manga" issue, Berliac.
Josselin: The title “Gaijin Mangaka”, which has a very vague literal meaning, makes clever use of how these Japanese words have acquired a more specific meaning once extracted from their original cultural setting. Is it a term sometimes used by some of these artists to try and define their sensibility?
David: It took us a while to come up with a summarizing title, and it was a challenge to not choose something plain silly. First we even thought, we could give the artists a theme, but then we just wanted to leave the contents completely to them. At one time I came up with the idea of “Foreign Manga”. Google helped me to translate it to “Gaijin”. Berliac uses “Gaijin Gekiga” as his header on his website, so with slight adjustments we got our title. Though Berliac said “Gaijin” is often used as derogative term, so we did have some slight reservations.
Berliac: My Japanese friends explained to me that the term Gaijin was “extracted from its original cultural setting”, in which it had racist connotations, by foreigners living in Japan to refer to themselves. So, I don’t know about the other artists, but when it comes to defining my own work, I don’t have any reservations, quite the opposite, I gladly see myself as an outsider, and make it an identity factor in my own work. One of the nicest “fan mail” I’ve ever received was from Japan, from a man saying he could certainly trace Yoshiharu Tsuge’s influence in my work, but at the same time he enjoyed learning about my own cultural background and experiences. Isn’t this a bit like immigrating? I learn your visual grammar as fluently as possible, to tell you about myself, to connect, and I learn about your own culture in the process.
Elsewhere:
The writer Chelsea Cain, recently of the Marvel comic book Mockingbird, becomes the latest female creative to quit Twitter after persistent harassment.
Aidan Koch reports back from LICAF on her experience there with Comics Workbook.
Ben Katchor on Virtual Memories.
Steve Dillon remembered at Hyperallergic.
Charles Burns' show at Galerie Martel is viewable in its entirety. I think this is all unpublished work -- fascinating stuff here. It's reaching deep into his and our history. I love it.
