It is a strange time in post-punk-rock culture, one in which the infrastructures developed over the last couple of decades to support, develop and propagate wholly independent and sometimes truly strange and challenging work are, in nearly all traditional mediums, rapidly disintegrating.
Independent record labels, radio stations, film ventures and print media of almost every stripe are in severe and rapid decline, casting a new and disconcerting vacuum for those raised in the flowering of DIY and indie culture. Of course, this all stems from and flows into the rapid expansion and refinement of new media and everything-you-could-ever-want on the Internet, but for those with more classical and tactile predilections, we have entered what may prove to be a very dark age. Happily, the medium, which has proven most resilient in the face of these paradigm shifts and which in fact, is, in its own microverse, presently experiencing something of an independent renaissance, is that great and all-inclusive print arena-the comic book. A clearer example of this robust and verdant time in indie comics could not be found than this year’s first-annual Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival (kicking off Dec. 5 at 11 a.m.), a joint venture of Williamsburg independent comic book Mecca Desert Island and Brooklyn-based “publisher and visual culture studio” PictureBox.
Organized by Desert Island owner Gabriel Fowler and PictureBox art director and editor Dan Nadel, the festival is an all-day jubilation of multi-generational comics radness. Fowler’s zeal about the state of the union in the Brooklyn comics scene is palpable: “Independent comics and homemade visual media are growing wildly in Brooklyn, and I think it's partially a backlash to the numbing reality of too much computer time. People are ready for hands-on culture. Besides, visual book-making will always be a viable art form, and New York needs a place for people to see each other's work.”
The festival, which takes spreads in tentacles our from its primary residence at Williamsburg’s Our Lady of Consolation Church to include panel discussions at art and dance-sweat space Secret Project Robot and an after party at Death by Audio, will be the most concentrated opportunity for artists and avid readers to share their interests in memory, and comes with the enthusiastic participation of some of the form’s most revered modern masters. Featuring artists ranging from the epochal, such as Black Hole creator Charles Burns and iconography icon Gary Panter to the blazingly contemporary, like Powr Masters creator and Paper Rad affiliate C.F., the festival presents a thrilling exposition of independent comics’ past, present and future.
Fowler’s personal expectations for the festival’s impact are both straightforward and charmingly extravagant, “We want to bring together artists with a broader creative community, introduce them to each other, and start a goddamn revolution.” And, while this sentiment undoubtedly echoes the voices of those who built the other branches of indie culture presently in their respective cultural hospices, comics feel, with all of their juxtaposed and mysterious power, undeniably better on the page than on your laptop, and so seem owed and likely to many more golden years on the presses and in our hands. Of the potentially ostentations and sometimes-dangerous claim to it being the “first-annual” Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival, Fowler states simply, “This festival represents a true scene which is alive with very real talent, and I see no reason why it shouldn't continue well into the future.”
Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival
Dec. 5, Our Lady of Consolation Church, 184 Metropolitan Ave. (betw. Bedford Ave. & Berry St.), Brooklyn, 718-388-5087; 11 a.m. to 7, Free
Independent record labels, radio stations, film ventures and print media of almost every stripe are in severe and rapid decline, casting a new and disconcerting vacuum for those raised in the flowering of DIY and indie culture. Of course, this all stems from and flows into the rapid expansion and refinement of new media and everything-you-could-ever-want on the Internet, but for those with more classical and tactile predilections, we have entered what may prove to be a very dark age. Happily, the medium, which has proven most resilient in the face of these paradigm shifts and which in fact, is, in its own microverse, presently experiencing something of an independent renaissance, is that great and all-inclusive print arena-the comic book. A clearer example of this robust and verdant time in indie comics could not be found than this year’s first-annual Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival (kicking off Dec. 5 at 11 a.m.), a joint venture of Williamsburg independent comic book Mecca Desert Island and Brooklyn-based “publisher and visual culture studio” PictureBox.
Organized by Desert Island owner Gabriel Fowler and PictureBox art director and editor Dan Nadel, the festival is an all-day jubilation of multi-generational comics radness. Fowler’s zeal about the state of the union in the Brooklyn comics scene is palpable: “Independent comics and homemade visual media are growing wildly in Brooklyn, and I think it's partially a backlash to the numbing reality of too much computer time. People are ready for hands-on culture. Besides, visual book-making will always be a viable art form, and New York needs a place for people to see each other's work.”
The festival, which takes spreads in tentacles our from its primary residence at Williamsburg’s Our Lady of Consolation Church to include panel discussions at art and dance-sweat space Secret Project Robot and an after party at Death by Audio, will be the most concentrated opportunity for artists and avid readers to share their interests in memory, and comes with the enthusiastic participation of some of the form’s most revered modern masters. Featuring artists ranging from the epochal, such as Black Hole creator Charles Burns and iconography icon Gary Panter to the blazingly contemporary, like Powr Masters creator and Paper Rad affiliate C.F., the festival presents a thrilling exposition of independent comics’ past, present and future.
Fowler’s personal expectations for the festival’s impact are both straightforward and charmingly extravagant, “We want to bring together artists with a broader creative community, introduce them to each other, and start a goddamn revolution.” And, while this sentiment undoubtedly echoes the voices of those who built the other branches of indie culture presently in their respective cultural hospices, comics feel, with all of their juxtaposed and mysterious power, undeniably better on the page than on your laptop, and so seem owed and likely to many more golden years on the presses and in our hands. Of the potentially ostentations and sometimes-dangerous claim to it being the “first-annual” Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival, Fowler states simply, “This festival represents a true scene which is alive with very real talent, and I see no reason why it shouldn't continue well into the future.”
Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival
Dec. 5, Our Lady of Consolation Church, 184 Metropolitan Ave. (betw. Bedford Ave. & Berry St.), Brooklyn, 718-388-5087; 11 a.m. to 7, Free
