Comic Art – City Tales Blog Project
From Goethe Institut:
So you think comics are only for collectors and superhero fans? Not the City Tales blog of the Goethe-Institut. Over the course of 12 months, beginning in May 2012, comic artists from eight countries have the opportunity to create stories about their cities. The artists, from Hamburg, Berlin, Bangkok, Melbourne, Jakarta, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi, send their characters on a journey through their respective cities.
Each month, a new theme is provided by the Goethe-Institut. The result is a varied collection of stories, each revealing typical characteristics of their country. While Vietnamese artist Nguyen Thanh Phong uses the topic “Ramadan, Idul Fitri, Festivals” to explore the real meaning of the traditional mid-autumn festival in Hanoi, the Malaysian artist has his protagonist Jambu, the street cat, experience Ramadan in Kuala Lumpur. Even fans who think they know everything about soccer can discover whole new aspects of the sport: for example, what “rat goal” means in Bangkok, to what extent soccer dictates daily life in Indonesia, or what it’s like to be an anti-soccer fan in Germany. Even daily topics like food and traffic are cast in a new light and presented in entertaining stories: the Australian artist Mandy Ord compares the sound of Niagara Falls with traffic noise in Melbourne, and Lyndon Gregorio from the Philippines illustrates local meals, organised according to the time of day.
In the next few months the artists will send their characters through the streets of their cities to explore such topics as “Music in Clubs and Streets” and “Fashion, Chic and Style”.
The young comic artist Nguyen Thanh Phong sketches the modern Vietnam in his comic strips and illustrates how traditional cultural values can be combined with a modern lifestyle. For example in his most recent comic strip, he turns an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world into a report about the traditional Vietnamese soup phở.
The comics genre he enjoys the most is experimental comics such as narrative portrait and autobiography. And he also has a great passion for historical Vietnamese comics.
The City Tales Blog offers an exceptional insight into the art of the comic strip in different cultures and entertains with interesting urban stories.
Join the journey through different countries, cities and comic cultures on: City-Tales: http://blog.goethe.de/CityTales/
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