Publish and Be Dammed returns to the ICA

The annual Publish And Be Damned self-publishers fair returns for its second year to London's ICA on Saturday 2nd March. The fair features over 50 publishers with experimental editorial directions and distribution strategies operating outside the mainstream.

While most involved appear to be non-comics related, the event will be of interest to creators looking at ways to distribute and market their work, whatever their content.

Organised by Kate Phillimore and Louise O'Hare as PABD in association with the ICA, participants are The Block, OEI magazine / OEI Editor, Happy Sick Idle, Copy, Picpus, Limner Journal and Studio Operative, FUN Magazine / Ditto Press, Duke Press, The Grantchester Free Press, Mark Pawson, Wysing Arts Centre, Café Royal Books, X marks the Bökship, Daniel James Wilkinson, Copy, The Coelacanth Press, P.A.S.T. Projects, covered in toner, Nieves, P.E.A.R., Fillip, New Documents, Allotrope Press, MUTE, AND, Schizm, Art Licks, ESP/Eastside Projects, Michalis Pichler, Hard Mag, Onomatopee, The Everyday Press, T-R-E-M-O-R-S, Clod Magazine, Infinite Greyscale, [RHP] CDRs, Decadence Comics, Garageland/ Arty, Occasional Papers, Performance as Publishing, AMBruno, Sara MacKillop, LemonMelon, David Osbaldeston, The London Bookshop Map, Banner Repeater, SALT., Arcadia Missa, oomk zine, I am Dora. I am Dora, The Gym and The Alarmist.

Programme:

Publish and Be Damned Fair - 11am - 7pm

Theatre, Free

Artists Videos: Instant publishing - 11am - 7pm

Theatre, Free

Artists videos are installed throughout the fair, playing with ideas of automatic writing and instant publishing and showing new work by Fiona James, Clunie Reid, Erica Scourti, Anne Tallentire, Duncan White and Camilla Wills. Reflecting upon practices of writing and distribution, and teasing out the relationship between experimental writing and publishing practices, this installation of silent video will serve as a starting point for talks and discussion at an upcoming ICA Friday Salon.

Curated by Three Letter Words and Duncan White. Organised by Publish And Be Damned in association with the ICA. Special thanks to The Block.

I Don't Want to Write a PhD - 11am - 12.30pm

Talk - Cinema 1, £5 / Free to ICA Members

A panel discussion with Chicks on Speed's Anat Ben-David, Sean Dockray, architect of aaaarg.org and organiser of the LA branch of The Public School, and artist and writer John Russell, focussing on the relationship between publishing and academic research. Chaired by art historians Alison Green and Joanne Morra.

Organised by PABD/Three Letter Words in collaboration with the Practices of Writing and Publishing research group at Central Saint Martins and in association with the ICA.

I Don't Want to Write a PhD - 1.30pm - 6pm

Workshop - ICA Studio, £5 / Free to ICA Members

The talk in Cinema 1 is followed by a workshop in the ICA Studio. Participants will produce a publication that documents the events of the day and addresses such issues as the role of circulation and sociability in the 'production of knowledge' and the efficiency of alternative modes of writing and distributing art criticism. Workshop participants will join Central Saint Martins postgraduate students to produce an 'instant publication' that will be launched in the ICA Bar after the fair.

Workshop run by Alison Green and Rebecca Harris. Organised by PABD/Three Letter Words in collaboration with the Practices of Writing and Publishing research group at Central Saint Martins and in association with the ICA.

Image, Text, Time: Typography in Artists' Film and Video - 3.30pm - 5pm

Film - Cinema 1, £5 / Free to ICA Members

This screening brings together artists' films and videos in which typography plays a central role. The screening will look at how typography has been used to shape new aesthetic relationships between image, text and time, and how viewing moving image might be considered as a process of reading as well as looking. Selected by Fraser Muggeridge and Will Rose.

LOVE PABD - From 7pm

ICA Bar, Launches, readings and DJs

Join us for DJing in the bar, plus readings from PABD members' publications, and the launch of I don't want to write a PhD - a publication based on the talk earlier in the day and produced as part of a workshop in the ICA Studio.

Publish and Be Damned 2013: 2 March 2013, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH. Book online: www.ica.org.uk. Box Office: 020 7930 3647

 

ICA threatened with closure?

London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, recently the hub for many brilliant and much-praised ComICA events, could close later this year due to funding cuts.

The Guardian reports the ICA, founded in 1947, could fall victim to recession with costs needing a £1m trim.

Staff members have been told that a financial deficit currently at around £600,000 might rise to £1.2m and if radical steps are not taken the ICA could be closed by May.

If the ICA closes it could be bad news for the growing raised profile of comics in the UK thanks to events organised there and Round London by Paul Gravett and the ComICA team. While comics events and activity in the UK are far from limited to London, it's an indisputable fact that London comics happenings are those most likely to attract the attention of the mainstream media, coverage which in turn helps boost the British comics industry nationally.

"This is bad news for the arts and ComICA too if it happens," commented one leading British comics commentator. "This recession is screwing everyone but bank directors."

The closure fears come after the Guardian had sight of the minutes of a sometimes bad-tempered staff meeting held last month, attended by Alan Yentob, the BBC creative director, and Tessa Ross, Channel 4's head of film and drama, both of whom sit on the ICA's council.

The meeting saw ICA director Ekow Eshun explain that a staff bill of £2.5m will have to be reduced by £1m for the organisation to survive. Without a wholesale restructuring, he argued, the ICA could be the first major British cultural organisation to fall victim to the recession.

The total turnover of the ICA is £4.5m, and it receives an annual ACE grant of £1.3m; recent fund raising initiatives have not been as successf as hoped, including hiring out the venue for commercial purposes.

Yentob told the Guardian: "We've been managing a programme with a large staff running numerous individual projects. When trouble emerged and financial problems surfaced because of the recession it was as if we had been ambushed from every side."

The ICA's management is now consulting on staff redundancies, with the process due to be completed by the end of March.

Ekow Eshun, who has been director of the ICA since 2005, said that he did take "responsibility for the ICA's present and future over the time that I've been here. But it has been going for 60 years. Trying to turn it round isn't straightforward."

Eshun's rein as director has not met with universal approval. "Talking to different staffers I got the impression there was disappointment that Mr Eshun was never around and didn't attend many events," one ICA-goer told downthetubes. It's difficult to know how committed he is and I think it's time someone else took over. Last year they closed the Performance Department. Tate Modern may have stolen the ICA's thunder to some extent but that is no excuse for a lack of new ideas with all those talented, artistic people."

Links


• The Daily Mail: Why ICA stands for Institute of Craftless Tat, by former chairman Ivan Massow

Tube Surfing: Friday 15 May

• Occasional downthetubes contributor Matt Badham talks to 2000 AD, Marvel Heroes and Judge Dredd Megazine writer Al Ewing in an interview recently posted at the Forbidden Planet International blog. "I’m probably proudest of the comics I’ve written for kids," he reveals. "There’s something joyous about writing a comic for an eight-to-twelve year old - it just feels free. Liberating. It’s nice to have something that’s just straight fun, without necessarily tying into anything or leading on to or from anything — something that anyone of any age can pick up and enjoy." Read the full interview here

• Speaking of the FPI blog, they're also hosting a series of behind-the-scenes essays from up-and-coming cartoonist Oliver East about his new graphic novel from British indie publisher Blank Slate, Proper Go Well High. The book is just the latest in the artist's Trains are...Mint series, all travelogues that document various walks East has taken.

"There are a lot of nods to Americana in the book,' writes East, discussing aspects of his process and the book, including his fascination with Americana: 'from water towers on top of buildings that you just don’t get in England to barn architecture. I’ve tried to keep them to a minimum but your mind wonders on these walks and I regularly fantasise about doing a Trains Are…Mint Stateside.' Read part one here, part two and part three here

• Meanwhile, those readers who want to get a taste of Oliver East's earlier work, could do worse than to hotfoot it to Manchester, where a new exhibition featuring some of his early work. Art School! - Historic Perspectives is a vibrant exhibition exploring student artwork from the Manchester School of Art archive at the School itself, spanning the history of the School since 1838. It's the sister exhibition to Art School! - Contemporary Reflections, which was recently held in the Holden Gallery and some of the faculty work exhibited there will shortly be on show in the Special Collections Gallery. The show also features artwork by famous alumni such as Martin Parr, Liam Spencer and Oliver East.
• The exhibition runs until 21st August 2009, open Mon-Fri 10am-4pm, Thurs 10am-7pm (term-time only). More information on the Special Collections web site

• And talking of events, comics guru Paul Gravett reports two Comica events next month in London. Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill will be at the ICA in The Mall on 2nd June, discussing the first part of their new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tale, Century: 1910, in which the League plunge into the brave new 20th century, with Carnacki the ghost-finder, Raffles, Pirate Jenny, Mac the Knife and more. The creators will be exploring their series' vast referential cosmos with popular culture guru Christopher Frayling, rector of the RCA. That event kicks off at 6.45pm and there are more details here on the ICA web site.
Then, on 20th June, the ICA plays host to a discussion of "La nouvelle bande dessinée", a comics movement which has swept through French comics. Now, two of its most dynamic members are translated into English. Émile Bravo draws My Mommy, about a boy’s yearning for his mother, and revives Belgian classic Spirou, while Emmanuel Guibert chronicles one GI’s experiences in Alan's War and works with photographer Didier Lefèvre to record a mission in Afghanistan in Doctors without Borders. Both will be in conversation with Comica’s Paul Gravett, and will sign books. More details here

• And finally for this round up... Paul Cornell - comics writer, Doctor Who writer and avid cricket fan - has been promoting some new pages drawn by Adrian Alphona from an upcoming issue of Captain Britain and MI-13 in which the heroes are seen playing the game. Given how Britain has at times been portrayed in US comics (although not, we stress, in this title!) "I'm just hugely flattered that these guys put the effort in to make the game look so spot on," says Paul. You can view the pages here on his blog.

ComICA 2008 Line-Up Unveiled

(with thanks to Paul Gravett): London's International Comics Festival returns to the ICA and other venues, including an exhibition in the ICA Concourse Gallery, between 13 and 26th November 2008.

There's plenty to appeal to downthetubes readers, but of special interest will be the Comiket of creators co-organised by London Underground Comics, Steve Holland's talk on classic British comics, and appearances by Alan Moore and Pat Mills -- that said, the whole line up is a terrific mix of many comics genres that will have wide apeal, so book your tickets early!

The Festival programme is detailed below. For more details and tickets visit ica.org.uk.

Friday, 14 November: One Day Symposium: Archetypes v Stereotypes - Post-War Comics & Graphic Novels
10am to 5.30pm Lecture Theatre, V&A Museum, South Kensington, London. Tickets: £40, concessions available. Book online or email bookings.office@vam.ac.uk
Examining the formation and function of archetypes and stereotypes - racial, sexual, social and political - in British and American comics and graphic novels of the post-war period. The day explores the extent to which the images and text associated with this genre can be progressive or reactionary; do they subvert dominant stereotypes or endorse them?

10.00 Coffee & Registration

10.30 Welcome & Introduction:
With John Meriton, Ian Rakoff and Paul Gravett.

10.40 Ian Rakoff - Art of the Century:
Comparing and contrasting the movies and the comics.

11.35 Charles Dierick, Director of the Hergé Museum:
Tintin in the Congo and Racial Stereotypes in Comics.

12.20 Dougie Braithwaite & Richard Reynolds:
Dougie Braithwaite, artist on Justice, interviewed by Richard Reynolds, author of Superheroes: A Modern Mythology, about changing attitudes and representations from Superman to Watchmen and beyond.

12.50 Discussion

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Eric Fernie, Courtauld Institute:
Women's Roles in Post-War Comics from Jane to Dylan Dog.

14.45 Pat Mills, UK/US comics writer, & Derek Liverpool, researcher:
Black, female and other minority characters in modern British and American comics. Chaired by Paul Gravett.

15.30 Coffee break

15.50 From Hippies To Yuppies:
Posy Simmonds on writing and drawing the British classes.

16.35 Women Creators & Characters Today:
Lise Myhre, strip cartoonist of Goth-girl Nemi in Metro, and Asia Alfasi, Muslim autobiographical graphic novelist, interviewed by Corinne Pearlman.

17.15 Plenary Discussion

Friday, 14 November: Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie: Lost Girls
7pm to 8pm Lecture Theatre, V&A Museum, South Kensington, London
Tickets: £8, concessions available, adults only Book online or call +44 (0)20 7942 2211
Legendary anarchist, occultist and comics writer Alan Moore is famous for his subversion of the classic American comic book genre and for groundbreaking works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell. A celebrated recent work is Lost Girls, three volumes portraying the adult erotic lives of storybook characters Alice, Wendy and Dorothy who meet in a pre-World War One Austrian hotel created with the artist Melinda Gebbie. Moore and Gebbie talk about their collaboration with the writer Kevin Jackson.

Sunday, 16 November: Conversations - Dave McKean’s Imaginings
2pm to 3.30pm, Brandon Room, ICA. Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members)
An indefatigable innovator, this year Dave McKean has conjured up The Graveyard Book with Neil Gaiman, The Savage with David Almond, drawing books Squink and Postcard from Paris, and Heston Blumenthal’s huge autobio-cookbook. Take a tour of his newest imaginings and his next solo comics.
Supported by Bloomsbury & Walker Books

Sunday, 16 November: Conversations - Between The Panels 3
4pm to 5.30pm Nash Room, ICA. Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members)
How do you make a graphic short story, and develop it into a graphic novel? Hannah Berry, Paul Duffield, Oliver East and Marcia Williams share their secrets and Rachel Cooke, Dan Franklin and other judges of The Observer/Cape/Comica competition present this year’s winners.
Supported by The Observer, Jonathan Cape, Blank Slate Books and Walker Books

Sunday, 16 November: Conversations - Turning Classics Into Comics
4pm to 5.30pm, Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA. Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members
Shakespeare, Brontë, Wilde and Dickens are getting visual makeovers as comics. How does prose transfer to panels? What is lost, and found, in translation? Richard Appignanesi and Ian Edgington talk with their visualisers Mustashrik, Chie Kutsuwada and Ian Culbard, and John M Burns and Mike Collins discuss their versions of Jane Eyre and A Christmas Carol. Plus signings.
Supported by Classical Comics, SelfMadeHero & Letraset

Monday, 17 November: Ian Rankin - Crime & Comics
7pm to 8.30pm Theatre, ICA. Tickets: £10, £9 concs, £8 members

The great crime writer’s debut graphic novel, a John Constantine Hellblazer original called Dark Entries, is due next year. Tonight he shares his passion for comics and talks about their role in improving youth literacy.

Tuesday, 18 November: Alex Maleev: Master of Mood
7.15pm to 8.30pm, Nash Room, ICA Tickets: £10, £9 concs, £8 members
Maleev has injected atmosphere and realism into Daredevil, cult computer game Halo and an online serial of Stephen King’s N. Tonight he talks to David Hine about his work. Followed by signings alongside French guests Ted Benoit and Emmanuel Guibert.
Supported by Thought Bubble Festival & Orbital Comics

Wednesday, 19 November: Ted Benoit & Emmanuel Guibert: The Best of Bande Dessinée
7.30 to 9pm The French Institute Library, 17 Queensbury Place, London. Tickets: £3, £2 concs. Available from 020 7073 1350
A rare opportunity to encounter two of France's leading contemporary graphic novelists, now being translated into English. Ted Benoit is one of the greatest exemplars of the "Ligne Claire" and illustrates new tales of Blake and Mortimer, Edgar P. Jacobs' thoroughly British detectives, written by Jean Van Hamme. Emmanuel Guibert collaborates with Joann Sfar on space pirate Sardine in Space and mummified romantic comedy The Professor's Daughter and specialises in deeply touching memoirs such as Alan's War, recounting an American soldier's life, and The Photographer, about Didier Lefèvre's reportage on the Afghanistan war. The artists will be interviewed by Ann Miller, author of Reading Bande Dessinée, and Paul Gravett, director of the Comica festival, and will sign their books afterwards.
In association with Cinebook and First Second Books

Saturday, 22 November: Comica Comiket
1.00pm to 7.00pm Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA. A free event with London Underground Comics.
Meet and buy from self-publishing creators of comics and manga, in print, online and for mobiles. Watch them work and join in on workshops. Plus graphic novel signings.

Sunday, 23 November: Conversations: Great British Comics: Past, Present & Future
2.00pm to 3.30pm Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA. Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members)
Boyfriend, Battle, Rick Random, Roy of the Rovers! Steve Holland, David Leach and David Roach re-live childhood favourites with surprise guests, while John and Patricia Aggs, Gary Northfield and Sarah McIntyre look at The DFC, Derek the Sheep and the new worlds of kids' comics.
Supported by Bloomsbury, Carlton, DFC and Titan

Sunday, 23 November: Conversations: Stripping Off - Erotic Comics
4.00pm to 5.00pm Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA
Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members)
A romp through modern X-rated comics with Erich von Gotha, Lynn Paul Meadows, Garry Leach and Wicked Wanda writer Frederic Mullaly. Hosted by Tim Pilcher, author of Erotic Comics: A Graphic History.
With The Erotic Review & Ilex Press

Sunday, 23 November: Conversations: Live From Kirby Plaza
5.30pm to 7pm Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA. Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members (All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members)
Jack Kirby co-created much of the Marvel universe, including Captain America and the X-Men, as well as creating the epic Fourth World series for DC. His work is reappraised by Paul Gambaccini, Mike Lake and Chrissie Harper. Hosted by Paul Gravett, with live transatlantic links to biographer Greg Theakston, artist James Romberger and Kirby Museum archivist Rand Hoppe.
Supported by Jack Kirby Quarterly & Quality Communications

Monday, 24 November: Sunday, 23 November: Art Spiegelman: Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist As A Young %@*!
7.30 to 9pm Theatre, ICA Tickets: £10, £9 concs, £8 members.
The Pulitzer-winning creator of Maus returns to autobiography in his latest work, combining reflections on how comics have warped his life with a reprint of Breakdowns, his rare collection of strips from the 1970s.
Supported by Penguin Books

Monday, 24 November: Shelton, Spain & Spiegelman: Up From The Underground
6.45pm to 8.15pm Cinema 1, ICA Tickets: £10, £9 concs, £8 members
Three of the greatest members of the US underground comix movement recall the heady daze of their 1960s debuts, their cartooning careers and their latest releases: Not Quite Dead by Gilbert Shelton, creator of the Freak Brothers; a strip biography of Che Guevara by Spain, inventor of Trashman; and Breakdowns by Art Spiegelman.
Supported by Knockabout Comics, Verso & Penguin

FILMS

Naruto - Ninja Clash In The Land Of The Snow/ Naruto 2 - Legend Of The Stone Of Gelel
Screenings: 23 November (double bill), 29, 30 November, Cinema 1 & 2, ICA
Tickets: Each film - tbc Double bill - £12, £11 concs, £10 members
A special anime double-bill with the first two features adapted from author Masashi Kishimoto’s manga series.

Film: Twentieth Century Boys
Screening: Wednesday, 26 November, 8.30pm Cinema 1, ICA
Tickets: tbc
A first look at the live-action version of Naoki Urasawa’s manga series, set to be the first in an epic fantasy trilogy.

EXHIBITIONS

From Friday, 14 November: Exhibition: PoCom 2 - Potential Comics Continued ICA concourse & bar
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Le Gun’s Neal Fox, Bill Bragg, Emma Rendel and more fill our long wall with a graphic story mind-map.

Exhibition: Incredibly Strange Comics From Friday, 14 November, ICA concourse & bar
Reel at the world's most outrageous, weirdest comics: Amputee Love! The Girl Who Loved The Swastika! Trucker Fags in Denial! Supported by Aurum Press

For more details and tickets visit ica.org.uk.