Kuti56

# 5 6

KE S Ä / SUMMER 2020 ILM AIS TA S AR JAK U VA A FREE COMIC S

SUOMEN PELLOT VÄRIKUVINA

kesänäyttely Helsingin keskustassa 26.6.–9.8.2020

www.galleryhalmetoja.com Avoinna: ti, to, pe 11–17 ke 11–19 la, su 12–16 Kalevankatu 16, Helsinki

#56 KESÄ / SUMMER 2020

© Taiteilijat / Artists

ISSN 1796-587X

www.kutikuti.com

Toimitus ja julkaisija / Editorial & publisher Kutikuti Päätoimittajat / Editors-in-chief Sezgin Boynik & Roope Eronen Taitto / Layout Evangelos Androutsopoulos Painos / Print-run 5 000

Kirjapaino / Printer Printall AS

Mainosmyynti / Ad sales kutimagazine@gmail.com

Tässä numerossa / In this issue Baran Caginli, Antti Eskelinen, Minna Henriksson, Magdaleena Jakkila, Isse Bo Karsten, Mazen Kerbaj, Alexei Kruchonykh & Olga Rozanova, Karolina Kucia, Esther Leslie & Ben Watson, Ron Perelman, Adam Randjelovic, Vidha Saumya, Jyrki Siukonen, Zampa di Leone Kansikuva / Cover image Vidha Saumya Kuti-lehteä julkaiseva Kutikuti r y on vuonna 2005 perustettu nykysarjakuvaan erikoistunut yleishyödyllinen ja taiteilijavetoinen yhdistys. Voit tilata Kuti-lehden myös kotiisi. Suomeen neljä numeroa sisältävän vuositilauksen hinta on 14 euroa, ulkomaille 22 euroa. Teet tilauksen kätevimmin kotisivuillamme osoitteessa www.kutikuti.com. Kuti-lehden seuraava numero ilmestyy syyskuussa 2020.

Kuti magazine is edited and published by Kutikuti, a nonprofit and artist-driven comics association.

You can also subscribe to Kuti. The subscription fee is 12 euros for one year (four issues). Abroad, the subscription costs 20 euros per year. All issues feature translations in English. The best way to subscribe is to visit our website at www.kutikuti.com. The next issue will be out in September 2020.

Mikkelin 12. kuvitustriennale Mikkelin taidemuseo 8.8.–25.10.2020 Maaherrankatu 18–20 www.mikkeli.fi/museot

Ada kylmän sodan keskellä. Vietkong, CIA, JFK, 1960-luku!

Vihdoin saatavana: sarjakuvakauppa.fi

Avoinna ti–su 10–17, ke 12–19, ma suljettu 1.10. alkaen ke 12–19, to–su 10–17, ma–ti suljettu

Piirros: Emmi Nieminen

suomen pelimuseo avautuu jälleen kesäkuussa! studiossa esillä:

toisista todellisuuksista – tuomas puikkonen larp-valokuvaajana 2010–2020

Kuva: Tuomas Puikkonen, 2019

museokeskus vapriikki, avoinna ti–su 10–18 alaverstaanraitti 5, tampere liput 13€ / 6€ | www.vapriikki.fi

INTRODUCTION: WAR IS NOW Sezgin Boynik Rab-Rab is an independent publishing platform committed to radical politics and experimental art, based in Helsinki. We publish thick journals and theoretical texts on political forms of avant-garde and contemporary art. We’ve existed since 2014. So far we have published journals on the issues of language, noise, forest, and remembering as future; artist’s books with linocuts on the political history of the paper industry in Finland; a pamphlet on zaum poetry; a translation of Viktor Shkolsvky’s book for children on cinema; the first English translation of Russian Formalist and Futurist experimental texts on revolutionary language; a book called Free Jazz Communism; and the latest, The Railway - An Adventure in Construction, a reprint of a historical account of activist labour in 1947 Yugoslavia.

To make all these issues more concise, below are six theses on war, which is a starting point for this project.

We are leftists who think art is too important to be left to the hands of gallery speculators, custodians of ‘national’ culture, institutional bureaucrats, university administrators, mainstream kitsch trendsetters, and capitalist warmongers.

Since then, for some months, the whole world is in such state of crisis and lockdown that all manner of experiments in closure, control, surveillance, and biological powers are applied on people’s bodies in a way that is only comparable to war. In this current situation, the partial suspension of the circulation of goods (not of production, which continues under hyperexploitative conditions) has made us aware of the real weight of the world: of capitalism based on hysteric consumption.

When seeing the mountains made of tonnes of rotten potatoes, fish, asparagus, and cheese, we not only realise the scale of the world of capitalism, but we also witness how centralised and controlled the Western world of capitalist free enterprise and diversity is. We come to understand that even without ongoing bloody war we are forced to live in a permanent state of siege and submission. ukk

To edit an issue of Kuti, as Rab-Rab, was a real challenge.

Kuti is published in editions of several thousands and can be picked up for free in many cities in Finland. Meanwhile people complain that is very difficult to get hold of Rab-Rab publications in Helsinki (not to mention the rest of Finland).

Kuti is a comics magazine, the entire issue of which is possible to read in a couple of hours. Rab-Rab, however, has published introductions to its journals that are more than thirty pages in length. People who want to know quickly what someone has to say, of course, complain about this aspect too. Kuti is made of images, Rab-Rab of texts. So, all things considered, it was quite a challenging combination to present Rab-Rab ideas in this new form. To explain how this started I should write something about the theory which lay the groundwork for this issue.

The departing point of this issue of Kuti in collaboration with Rab-Rab was imagining how to picture the theses on the actuality of war, precisely how to make the visual case for political and theoretical theses on the ubiquity of war. We started to plan this issue with Roope Eronen sometime in November last year. The working plan was to follow certain steps: if war is everywhere in all its various forms, then the crucial thing to do would be to discover what is the logic behind this pervasiveness of destruction, and how that logic is tying together the whole capitalist world.

Initially, the idea was to find ways to connect ongoing wars to the rest of the world.

When looked at from the perspective of war, the usual concepts regarding politics and society either stop to have any meaning or they change their old meanings. The logic of war, to use Bertolt Brecht’s and Viktor Shklovsky’s definitions, defamiliarises or estranges our understanding of the world, and pushes us to grasp the inextricable relation between the state and capital as an acute problem.

That further implicates how the human is defined, the role of science, the way art and culture could challenge these things and also how they could push us to discuss whether understanding this logic can help to oppose it. As a result, we want to argue that we are not helpless in all this, and most importantly, that we should start by delineating the limits of war.

1. War is the purest form of capitalism.

2. War is not a competition between nations/states/capitals: during the war, all three collaborate on a higher level.

3. People are forced into war: any dissent against war and capital is severely punished.

4. War is not a rewarding experience: it is oppressing, mutilating, confusing, and depressing.

5. War is not progressive: it does not advance anything other than the apparatus of capitalism.

6. War is the reduction of people into raw materials.

Visually, the starting point of this issue was to give an impression that we live in an age similar to the 1930s, in the dissolution years of everyday fascism between two World Wars. Poet and translator from Belgrade, Adam Randjelovic’s ‘Little Song for the Maimed (dedicated to Benjamin Péret)’ is one such contribution. Péret, a Surrealist poet and the founder of the Trotskyist-oriented Brazilian Communist League, imagined opposing the world of fascism through the victorious struggles of poetry and the masses. Another homage in this issue is given to Eva Wichman, drawn by Helsinki based artist Isse Bo Karsten. Wichman, also a communist poet, writing in the Swedish language in Finland, sent an open letter to Finland Kommunistiska Parti (the Swedish name for Communist Party of Finland) in 1963 detailing that she had decided to leave the party that had chosen the road of state consolidation and asked artists to submit to this decision.

Karsten draws this split.

Minna Henriksson’s ‘Kiila/Wedge’ is a poetic linocut story of the leftist writers and artists association Kiila, established in the mid-thirties in Finland. Still active, Kiila was founded by a majority of women writers who not only opposed to the rise of fascism in Finland and the brutal oppression of the freedom of thought and expression, but also had to organise themselves against patriarchy that was still prevalent within their leftist circles. Henriksson tells this forgotten story of bright days of Kiila.

Rab-Rab gives special care to revitalise and actualise all these glorious past struggles of the artistic avant-garde; showing how their radical gestures were so dynamic that the world they envisioned is still contemporary by our standards today. In

this issue, there is a short intro to what Rab-Rab understands from zaum, the beyond-sense words of the Russian Futurists.

Following this, we have re-enacted a zaum story through zaum images made by Alexei Kruchonykh and Olga Rozanova in 1915, in the midst of the First World War, a decisive war in Russian history. Kruchonykh and Rozanova’s ‘Universal War’ is not only a prophetic work (it predicts almost exactly the year of Ronald Reagan’s plan of the Strategic Defense Initiative, an intercontinental ballistic missiles project which ended the Cold War, and introduced ever-present capitalist industry hinged on warmongering) but is also a testimony to how it is possible to use the most abstract images and words to talk about the most concrete of issues.

Jyrki Siukonen, artist and translator of Viktor Shklovsky, combines in rather more objective and tangible terms the connection between the avant-garde and war. By using a description of one particular military action recounted by Shklovsky, a leading theoretician of the Russian avant-garde, Siukonen in just two pages gives us a picture of how the rhythm of war is felt by those on the front.

We have other contributions about war as well: visual artist Baran Caginli’s work offers an analysis of the workers struck by and crushed in-between the production economy of factories and destructive politics of the fronts. Mazen Kerbaj, a musician and artist from Beirut whose work has previously been published in Rab-Rab Journal, pictures the madness of war that became quotidian in the Middle East, once more as a result of global capitalism and military industry.

Magdaleena Jakkila’s visual narrative is a precise and cool observation describing how military spectacle is feeding nationalist culture. “The Independence Day of Poland – the first time I inhaled tear gas” is a testimony of the horrors of Independence Day parades in Poland. We inhale a similar atmosphere every year in Finland on December 6th during the Independence Day celebrations. Everywhere in the world, in ceremonies like this, aggressive and confused forms of nationalisms evidence their own combative and hostile ideological roots.

Next to these, there are also contributors dealing with the current state of the world of consumption. In Karolina Kucia’s story,

tomatoes tell of the dark side of the global economy that brings them to our homes. That route is made possible by capitalism, which on its way turns everything it touches into a desolated land charged with misery. The numbers in Yakov Perelman’s drawing, which shows how much food one person consumes during their lifetime, are from the late forties (the image is taken from a translation of Perelman’s book on numbers published in Zagreb in 1949). We should all do one for ourselves.

Antti ‘Eze’ Eskellnen’s tales of the rehabilitating job support services is a theatre of cruelty of contemporary microcosm of countless refuse. These stories are possible to tell only the way how Eze does, by combining reportage with punk, and documentary with excess.

Since Rab-Rab is about art, we also have two contributions addressing the tragicomic state of things in the field of contemporary consumerist culture. The story about the Hamburg art scene mafia told by Zampa di Leone collective from Belgrade is a socio-historical note on how the contemporary art scene is hand in glove to private market speculations, gentrification plans, and money laundering. No less baroque in its setting is Vidha Saumya’s amazingly funny story about Bhuphen Khakhar, Indian contemporary artist, and his philistine mecénás who in shock after realising, in a gallery space, what kinds of art they support, suddenly and collectively sneeze.

To keep the tradition running, we are in this number of Kuti publishing a theoretical-political contribution discussing the art of comics. This is an excerpt of Esther Leslie and Ben Watson’s 2002 talk, ‘Comic Book Marxism’, analysing the ironic language of Marx (which was one of his initial literary attributes) in comparison to the inherent political (i.e. anti-authoritarian) form of comics. To the readers of Kuti who are interested in these topics, we recommend Esther Leslie’s book Hollywood Flatlands from 2004, which has reproduced on its cover Sergei Eisenstein’s famous handshake with Mickey Mouse.

It is up to the readers to judge, but we think that sometimes it is possible to solve quite complicated and challenging political issues with few successful and bright images.

Adam Randjelovic: Little Song for the Maimed (dedicated to Benjamin PĂŠret)

Isse Bo Karsten: Hommage to Eva Wichman This does not mean that the mainlines in my personal attitude towards life have changed. The area of literature and art is the closest to me: within these innovative areas an artist cannot accept ready made representations, which usually come from a non-expert direction.

Eva Wichman Letter to FKP 2.7.1963

And to hear the almost unhearable To see the almost unseeable The cloud saw me

Minna Henriksson: Kiila/Wedge Kiila was founded in 1936 as a leftist, antifascist and antiwar writers’ group in rightist Finland. Majority of founders of Kiila were women. In their works, there is also anti-patriarchalism targeting reactionary bourgeois culture, and also the role of women in leftist movement.

Quote from Tyyne-Maija Salminen in Kolmen naisen talo (1937): “There were not even the apple trees with their flowers to tell that she did not have the right to think of herself but them, firstly them.�

Lentolehtiset / Leaflets (after Elvi Sinervo, Runo Söörnäisistä, 1937)

A big house buzzing like a music box, / South Sea songs, dance rhythm, / sweet songs in parallel with marches.

(Free translation by M. Henriksson from Katri Vala, Kesäilta laitakaupungilla, Paluu, 1934)

Jyrki Siukonen: Viktor Shklovsky Strikes (Excerpts from his book A Sentimental Journey, 1923) 1 … I picked up a rifle, stepped over our line and moved forward. I went about sixty steps, I guess – a ditch, a road, another ditch, and just beyond it were the Austrians. 2 Time seemed to stand still. Sometimes during a storm, when lightning illuminates the clouds, they seem that still…

1 I remember the charge. Everything seemed remote, strange and still. Somewhere off to the left in some elder bushes, a German machine gun opened up with a sporadic rattle. 2 Then a deserted village with chickens running around in the streets. One of the men tried to catch one. There were just a few of us left; most had been wiped out. / At that moment, I felt something warm in my side and found myself being knocked to the ground. More accurately, I found myself lying on the ground. / I was shot through the stomach.

English by Richard Sheldon

Alexei Kruchonykh & Olga Rozanova: Yleissota

Vidha Saumya: Aivastelun kosketus Bhupen kutsui uusien maalaustensa näyttelyyn seitsemän erityistä ystävätärtään, jotka olivat olleet hänelle suopeita kuten Bhupen myös oli ollut heille oikein miellyttävää seuraa.

He eivät olleet ennen käyneet näyttelyissä mutta tiesivät että tilaisuus on tärkeä. Joten he pukeutuivat asiaankuuluvasti. / Heidän saapuessaan galleriaan Bhupen astui tervehtimään heitä.

Naiset vaikuttuvat ja hämmästyvät näkemästään. Mutta ennen kuin ehtivät ihmetellä tai tervehtiä ääneen he kaikki alkavat aivastella.

‘Heillä oli hienostuneet nenäliinat ja kukkaisparfyymiä. Ehkä hajuvesien siitelpöly reagoi heidän kiihtymykseensä ja sai heidät yhtäkkiä aivastamaan’ sanoi Bhupen kertoessaan näyttelystä ystävälleen.

Ingo Taubhorn, Florian Waldvogel, Oliver Bula Wir sind woanders, IBA, Dr. Hans Jochen Waitz, Klausmartin Kretschmer

Zampa di Leone 1 Zampa di Leone presents: FASHION SESSION 2 Stop! Do you have von Eden entrance card? / oil on canvas / oil on canvas 3 Sign it! 4 Astra Kulturverein / Jonathan Monk or die / minimal art / Cabrio 30ties 5 Hallo, Heer von Eden, I need dozen uniforms for one festival… / capital / Bildung kostet Geld.GmbH / Do you want to have uniforms from our new collection: “Entartete Kunst”?

as, Bent Angelo Jensen, Martin Köttering Lia Perjovschi, Dmitry Vilensky, Daniel Richter, Jonathan Meese, Harald Falckenberg 1 TREASURE ISLAND / 100 artists 2 Mit Kultur groß werden / innovativity / the new / future / interculturality / creativity / No! / Yes! / criticality / We don’t want to be instrumentalized

by IBA and Hafen City! / Do we all have to go to Berlin? / 300 artists, 3000 visitors / Price of the artworks 100.000 € / Free space in Gängeviertel / Price 20.000 euros

1 OFF OR DIE! / Wir sind woanders 2 Comrades! International and international artists from Hamburg… / Lenin Not Off / capital / …Let’s make revolution together! 3 I buy only Off

COMIC BOOK MARXISM Esther Leslie and Ben Watson A materialist theory of culture needs to be able to recognise the way in which social hierarchy damages the psyche, and include destructive tendencies in its dialectic. Without recognition of this animosity towards received culture, culture because something external to the self, an oppressive set of maxims and rules. Hans Richter, both a participant and annalist of dada, named its dialectic ‘art and anti-art’. When, at the height of the punk furore, the manager of the Sex Pistols Malcolm McLaren was accused of provoking violence and destruction at punk gigs, he replied ‘you’ve got to be able to destroy to create’. It is not for nothing that The Beano, the most widely read children’s comic of the 1970s, expresses a continual animosity to civilisation in favour of jokes, chaos and transformation.

If truth is ‘objective rather than plausible’, as Adorno put it [Negative Dialectics, p. 41], then the most astonishing thing is not the special leisure gardens of the soul set aside by an administered society, but the moment when actuality breaks in and jolts conceptual systems. As the surrealists discovered, one of the most extraordinary aspects of the materialist approach is ‘coincidence’ or what looks like coincidence to those positivists who believe in a Cartesian separation between the realms of soul and body, thought and the universe.

Tristram Shandy, a work published in between 1760 and 1767 by the Irish-born writer Laurence Sterne, is a famous humorous novel which perpetually mocks the idea of stable systems of representation and the ‘paradigms’ of space and time which Kant declared were fundamental to human perception. Like James Joyce, Sterne uses sexual materialism to mock both bourgeois morality and bourgeois rationalism, introducing body functions in the most unlikely places.

Tristram Shandy begins his biography - logically enough - with his own conception. His parents’ sexual congress is interrupted when his mother asks his father if he has remembered to wind up the clock: the protest against mechanical reason could not be more graphic.

The young Marx read and enjoyed Tristram Shandy. In the late 1830s, he even wrote an emulation of it named Scorpion and Felix.

The biting satire of classics like the Eighteenth Brumaire and Das Kapital would not have been possible without Sterne’s literary example.

In chapter 37 of Scorpio and Felix, Marx satirises David Hume, whose radical empiricism caused him to question the reliability of any knowledge, thus refuting the progressive politics of the Enlightenment in its own terms: David Hume maintained that this chapter was the locus communis of the preceding, and indeed maintained so before I had written it.

His proof was as follows: since this chapter exists, the earlier chapter does not exist, but this chapter has ousted the earlier, from which it sprang, though not through the operation of cause and effect, for this he questioned. Yet every giant, presupposes a dwarf, every genius a hidebound philistine, and every storm at sea - mud. As soon as the first disappear, the latter replace them, sitting down at the table and sprawling arrogantly with their long legs.

The first are too great for this world, so they are thrown out. But the latter strike root in it and remain, as one may see from the facts, for champagne leaves a lingering aftertaste which is repulsive. Caesar the hero leaves behind him the play-acting Octavianus, Emperor Napoleon the bourgeois Louis Philippe, the philosopher Kant the

carpet-knight Krug, the poet Schiller the Hofrat raupach, Leibniz’s heaven Wolf ’s schoolroom, the dog Boniface this chapter.

Thus the bases are precipitated, while the spirit evaporates.

[Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, translated Alick West, Collected Works, Vol. 1, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975, chapter 37, p.

628].

Marx’s biographer Francis Wheen is correct to see in this passage an anticipation of the famous opening lines of the Eighteenth Brumaire, which mocked Napoleon III as a farcical repetition of Napoleon Bonaparte. Sterne’s debunking satire, which contrasts shabby reality with grand ideals, made a permanent impression on Marx. This contrast is contained in the marxist insult ‘epigone’, and describes the degradation of the presentday politicians and cultural figures in comparison to the illustrious history they appeal to for legitimacy. Marx’s idea of using the past, not as justification for a miserable present, but as its judge and executioner is contained in both Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution and in Benjamin’s idea of saving culture from the conformism which threatens to overcome it. This view of history as revenge on the present separates marxists from anarchists and postmodernists, whose only hope lies in an undetermined, brand new future.

Marx’s conclusion - “thus the bases are precipitated, while the spirit evaporates” - accuses the current ruling class of being the dregs, thus applying to them the insult they direct at the proletariat. Marx’s satire concludes with a dog named Boniface (apparently the “one and the same as Saint Boniface, the apostle of Germany”, citing in proof his Epistles no. 105, where he describes himself as a barking dog) being given an enema of oil, salt, bran, honey and clyster.

“Poor Boniface! You are constipated with your holy thoughts and reflections, since you can no longer relieve yourself in speech and writing!”

“O admirable victim of profundity! O pious constipation!” [same chapter 48, p. 632] The equation between literary production and the moving of the bowels was also one made by James Joyce. It is not simply scatological satire of the high and mighty, but insistence on the human agency in literary production, refusal to allow the text’s productive source in the writer’s physical and social being to be obscured by transcendental concepts. Marx’s satire on David Hume is based on his own productivity as a thinker and writer: he attacks Hume’s skepticism by accusing it of an a priori certainty that what he is writing at the minute will only be the lifeless residue of previous ideas.

The image of culture as a house of cards which any breath of disrespect might topple is not based on an understanding of the role of culture in modern society, but from tendentious pleadings by professional intellectuals and academics. This ‘defence of culture’ is a metaphysical reflection of class society, and its hierarchical distinctions between high and low, spirit and matter, culture and economics, noble consumption and base production. Karl Marx pointed out on the first page of Das Kapital that “the capitalist system of production does not care whether the human needs that it satisfies stem from the stomach (Magen) or phantasy (Phantasie)”...

A robust cultural theory needs to be able to deal with this fact.

Progressive cultural criticism is not about selecting the best items for consumption, but about creating conditions for the self-production of culture.

In the late 70s, the argument in England about Punk Rock was a graphic example of the difference between idealists, who define what people are by their choices in consumption, and materialists, for whom the essence of mankind’s species-being is productive labour.

The Sex Pistols deliberately produced music that was violent, nihilist and politically unsafe. It was not possible to approach except in a productive manner. In 1977, the listener had either to refuse the music, or become a punk in active opposition to humdrum existence.

There was no possibility of using the music like Tubular Bells, as an ornamental addition to a regular life-style. Some elements of the left - including the Workers Revolutionary Party - denounced Punk as fascist, and would have nothing to do with it. In the Socialist Workers Party, we decided to split punk apart over the issue of racism, forcing its adherents to choose between nihilism against people and nihilism against property relations and immigration controls. Rock Against Racism was possible because, as marxists, we did not consider political truth to reside in transcendental concepts - such as love, peace and tolerance - but in the self-activity of bands and fans. The appetite for punk records and gigs was an objective social fact which the left had to relate to, not some ‘commodity fetish’ which the left could loftily ignore. Since punk served adolescent sexual needs as well as the need for social expression and adventure, there was no distinguishing between Magen and Phantasie.

responses. After reading this comic strip, it is impossible to look on civilisation as anything other than a woeful tragedy of self sacrifice.

From The Beano to the Frankfurt School, the identical diagnosis.

How come? Because Truth is no respecter of persons.

Punk’s equivalent was plastic and formica. Though the point was not to represent it, but to appreciate it in itself. Punk was a populist modernism which reached a mass audience: punks could only look on with horror as the academic epigones, who had never been to the gigs and never dyed their hair pink, took on the philosophy of postmodernism and took over the academy, declaring that ‘high modernism’ was an enemy of the people, and that consumer culture provided audiences with everything they need. Giants had been replaced with dwarves, and champagne with a linger aftertaste which was repulsive.

Materialist cultural analysis can easily claim the human universality of themes like sex and shit and dogs. By making Diogenes his antichrist, Peter Sloterdijk has already proved as much. It is less clear what parts culture and anti-culture make up a genre like punk. As the conclusion of this text, we will look at some examples taken from The Beano, a comic which was read by all children in Britain throughout the 60s and 70s, and which definitely had some influence on Punk Rock. Since Punk became an international export, whereas The Beano has remained a native phenomenon, perhaps you call help us judge the extent to which it shaped Punk.

Colour was what made the comic so attractive. It’s used sparingly, thus keeping the price down. Simple black-and-white is alternated with black-and-red-and-white, then there’s colour for front and back and the magnificent centre-fold of ‘The Bash Street Kids’. There’s a certain pecking order - it’s noticeable that the funnier strips with the stronger characters get the extra red, and everyone agrees that The Bash Street Kids are the comic’s high point. This was in an era before newspapers were printed in colour, though on Sundays there were glossy ‘colour supplements’ full of photographs and advertisements featuring models, cars, liquor and cigarettes (none of which were of interest to children). Supplied with a Beano and a packet of ‘Refreshers’, ‘Opal fruits’, ‘Wine Gums or a handful of four-a-penny Fruit Salads’, a child’s pocket money seemed to purchase riches unknown to adults. In this sense, The Beano was providing the kind of infantile pleasure stimulated by multicoloured wooden beads strung across a baby’s pram. Beanos tended to be kept at ground level - you could locate them quickly even in an unknown newsagent. The stories are told from the point of view of children, continually at war with parents, teachers and policemen. At first, the cover featured ‘Biffo The Bear’, an unaccountably petit-bourgeois character who was forever fussing about his carpet, curtains and pictures. No less than Odysseus, Biffo The Bear enacted symbolic narratives whose significance for philosophy could far outway his seemingly humdrum existence.

Biffo the Bear is the Odysseus of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. He has solved his problems by suppressing his

The article is a condensed version of the paper delivered at the Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst, Leipzig, 2002.

1 Rehabilitating Job Support is magic and the rehabilitation centre is a magical kingdom ruled by the ponies./ Unemployed fat punk. 2 Princess Celestia. The Leader Pony. /Dear child. Don’t worry. I’ll call Kela and this travel cost thing will sort itself out right away. /A phone call from Celestia will fix in a day what otherwise would have taken a month. 3 Everybody will shoot a video c.v.!!! /The auntie Severe is strict but just. Nevertheless you mostly feel pity for her. 4 Pinkie Pie. The other counselor. / Impro theatre tomorrow. /A real doofus. But fun. Loves playing tag and will not stand on ceremony if there’s candy in display. 5 Fluttershy. The senior intern. A.k.a The wonder granny! /I love you all. Come on now, the loser team will also take a chocolate bar. / If they, once graduated, will end up working for Kela, they’ll give you one year’s decisions in advance and bake cinnamon rolls to assure you won’t feel bad about anything. 6 Rainbow Dash. The junior intern./ Everyone pick a card with the emoji that best describes your feelings today! /I am (poop emoji) / Makes you question the reality. Am I in preschool again? Or have I ended up in a mental institute?

Antti ‘Eze’ Eskelinen: Life Sucks ”Tales of the Rehabilitating Job Support Services” #1

1 Anonymous client #72 ”The working class hero”/ Well in my time a full grown man could go to drink a pint or two on lunch break! / Whaddaya say? We gonna go? / And off we went! Although the theme of the day was supposed to be substance abuse care…2 Anonymous client #812 ”The junior worker”/ Sure there’s plenty of work for me, but I don’t have a driver’s licence. I didn’t need it before but the times have changed and the business too. / Would be cheaper to cover the costs of the licence for me instead of making me come here. 3 Anonymous client #4287 ”The teacher”/ I had a cerebral hemorrhage that caused aphasia, so I can’t practise my profession. / But I do have a driver’s licence so I am held able to work. 4 Anonymous client #567 ”The sensitive” / Workplace bullying destroyed my mental health and took all the joy of my life and gave me a panic disorder. / Years have passed but it still makes me cry. / Luckily this story has a happy ending.

Apprenticeship training enabled them to pursue another career. 5 Anonymous client #402 ”Hard knock life” / Don’t be scared, it’s not contagious. / Three different chronic diseases but they laughed at me when I mentioned the disability pension. / I’d like to hear more about debt counseling if that’s okay. 6 Anonymous client #666 ”The overage school shooter” / I am perfect!!!! /The rest of you are just sheep! /I’m not taking part in anything! /Boohoo. /This is all pointless and stupid. / Got eventually fired and waiting time. I’m pretty sure they came back with a rifle.

Life Sucks ”Tales of the Rehabilitating Job Support Services” #2

1 In some rare occasions rehabilitating job support can concern getting a job, like this excursion to a recruitment fair./ To be a game designer… or a security guard? /”Are you the new face of security.”/If I am then god forbid us! 2 Events concerning the actual subject matter are scarse but we have to pass time in some way. So we also visit a biotech fair, a documentary film festival, a conference for entrepreneurs, recreational day for yuppies, museums etc. / What are we doing here? / I dunno but I was a bit disappointed that this angel investor doesn’t get investment tips from angels. 3 All kinds of picnics, field trips, orienteerings, treasure hunts and other pass out marches are of course part of the deal./ Aren’t we having fun? / Yes, Pinkie Pie!! / I can’t take it anymore… 4 Once back at the rehabilitation centre it’s time to listen to the expert by experience. / This what happened. I drank, took drugs and gambled everything I earned plus took debt. First I lost my job, then wife and kids. And the house. I went to jail where I was sodomized every day. I hit rock bottom. When I got out, a dude on the street called ”get a job”. I guess I could, I thought. 5 NB! Very important! Remember to fill in the feels meter at the end of every day! Download the app and choose from: /Excellent!!!/ Good!/Oh well…/ Fuck this shit./ Ha ha! Just kidding. The last option is of course ”out of pep”. I’m such a funny guy, right? ;) 6 Finally, Twilight Sparkle will tell you how to make it through the rehabilitating job support. /Have an open mind!/And remember. If you have nothing else to do, the cv can never be polished enough./ Are you ready to rehabilitate?!

Life Sucks ”Tales of the Rehabilitating Job Support Services” #3

Ron Perelman: Trainful of food / Juna täynnä ruokaa 10,000 l water / 1,000 kg butter / 7,000 kg bread / 2,000 kg meat / 4,000 kg fish / 5,000 kg potatoes / 5,000 eggs / 3,000 l milk / 500 kg sugar / 500 kg salt / vegetables, canfood, tea, fruit, cheese, coffee etc.

How much food a person consumes in their lifetime.

Yakov Perelman, Mathematics can be fun, 1949

Almeria, 70’s

“Almerian miracle” - The most impoverished area of Spain, partially desert, reaches sudden economic growth, becoming large, covered in plastic a large spot. So large that you can see it with bare eyes from space. It looks then as it would be wiped out with an eraser. erase

I came with a visa, the other comes with a boat, do you know what is a patera? It is a boat that can fit a group of 25 people. For example, I came with patera that has no engine. And then you have to save people. I took father's boat and came with five others.

We used the opportunity when all the village was at the wedding. I came illegally without papers, disguised. It cost me 7,000 euros. I got a passport from a friend of mine who works in an office, we exchanged a picture.

But I think it doesn't matter if one came by boat or through another country or with visa, but that working conditions here in Almería and throughout whole Andalusia are bad that’s the point.

In early 2000 there used to be busses of Eastern European workers coming there. A few years later, the fact that they gained the freedom to move in the EU, gave them leverage to negotiate higher positions and wages. People who stayed and still arrive at the fields those days, come mostly through or from Morocco.

Karolina Kucia: Sttttory / Ttttarina 1 Voi ihmettttä! / Meillä on kasvua! / Ttttalouskasvua! (Almeria 1970-luvulla) 2 Niin minuttt synnyttttettttiin. / Helvetinmoinen ihme. / Minä olen TTTT / Muodostun kolmesta ttttekijästä 3 Auringonpaiste. Sen vuoksi kasvan vuoden ympäri. / Tuuli. Jottta he voivattt ttehdä tttöittä koko päivän. / Halpa tttyövoima.

4 Minä kasvan ttttällaisessa kassissa. / Riittävästi itsenäisyyttä, ollakseni tuottelias. 4 ‘Almerian ihme’. — Espanjan köyhin alue, joka on osittain autiomaata, nousee yllättäen talousihmeeksi ja muuttuu valtavaksi muovilla päällystetyksi alueeksi. Se on niin suuri, että sen voisi nähdä paljain silmin avaruudesta. Aivan kuin se olisi pyyhitty pois kumilla / Minulla oli tullessani viisumi, mutta jotkut tulivat veneellä. Tiedätkö mikä on ‘patera’? Se on suuri vene, johon mahtuu 25 henkeä. Esimerkiksi minä tulin tänne pateralla, jossa ei ollut moottoria. Sen lisäksi meidän piti pelastaa ihmisiä. Minä otin isäni veneen ja tulin viiden ihmisen kanssa. Käytimme tilaisuutta hyväkseen, kun kylässä oli hääjuhlat. Matka maksoi minulle 7000 €. Sain passin ystävältä joka työskenteli toimistossa.

Vaihdoimme kuvan. Sillä ei ole väliä oletko tullut veneellä, toisen maan kautta vai viisumilla. Työolosuhteet Almeriassa ja Andalusiassa ovat niin surkeat, siitä on kysymys / 2000-luvun alussa Itä-Euroopan maista työntekijöitä saapui busseittain. Joitain vuosia myöhemmin liikkumisvapaus Euroopassa takasi heille mahdollisuuden neuvotella paremmat sopimukset ja palkat. Mutta ne ihmiset jotka tulevat pelloille töihin, silloin ja nykyisin, saapuvat Marokosta.

The reproduction of “almerian miracle” - Italy, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, Canary Islands, New Zealand, Japan, China and South Korea.

We are who you cannot see in this picture. It is almost like the sun is what does the work, we don’t. The sun puts more of its input into this, and that’s what makes some rich. We open and close windows on weekdays, public holidays, weekends. If it winds, we wake up at night to see what the ttt t tt’s situation is. We earn really little. It Is not enough.

1 ‘Almerian ihme’ on toistettu Italiassa, Egyptissä, Jordaniassa, Marokossa, Tunisiassa, Kyproskella, Kanarian Saarilla, Uudessa-Seelannissa, Japanissa, Kiinassa ja Etelä-Korea / Meillä on kasvua! / Voi ihmetttttä! / Ttttalouskasvua! / Sitttä kutttsuttttaan Muovimereksi / Käytttämme aineitttta 2 Olemme ne, joita et näe kuvassa. Aivan kuin aurinko tekisi koko työn, emme me. Aurinko panostaa työhön enemmän ja tekee toisista rikkaita. Avaamme ja suljemme ikkunat viikolla, juhlapyhinä ja viikonloppuisin. Jos tuulee, heräämme öisin tarkastamaan mikä on tilanne. Ansaitsemme todella vähän. Se ei riitä mihinkään / Olemme lainmukaisia / Mattttkustttamme / Ttttässä me olemme / Riittttävästtti itttsenäisyyttä, ollakseni tttuottttelias.

Based on stories by members of SOC-SAT Nijar, Keller Easterling’s book “Enduring Innocence. Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades”, Paolo Virno's Virtuosity and Revolution and script for “Exodus, Gods and Kings” by dam Cooper or Bill Collage or Jeffrey Caine or Steven Zaillian.

1 Aivan lähellä. On kuvauspaikkoja spagettttiwestttterneille. Hyvättt, pahattt ja rumattt … Muuttttaman dollarin tttähden … Ja sittten ttttämä! Exodus elokuvan lavasttteettt. Ttttoisttetttaanpa yksi kohtaus: / Heidän kuuluisi saada tttyöstä palkkaa / Heille kuuluu samattt oikeudettt / Vai, pitttäisikö heidättt vapauttttaa? / Tttalouden näkökulmasta katttsottttuna. Kysymyksesi on vähintttäänkin problemaattttinen / En haluaisi olla ttttttäällä / Muttttta ei ole paikkaa minne mennä / Perustuu ammattiliitto SOC-SAT:n Nijarin osaston jäsenten tarinoihin, Keller Easterlingin kirjaan “Enduring Innocence, Global Architecture and Its Politicsl Masquerades”, Paolo Virnon kirjaan “Virtuosity and Revolution” sekä Dam Cooperin tai Jeffrey Cainen tai Steven Zailianin käsikirjoitukseen “Exodus, Gods and Kings”.

This is a facsimile edition of Leo Lionni’s drawing as it appeared on the back cover of Courier magazine in November 1971. Courier is the magazine published by UNESCO, and this special issue was focused on “Answers to racism: the drama that still plagues the world.”

1 This is Little Blue. 2 Little Yellow is Little Blue’s best friend. 3 One day Mama Blue says to Little Blue, “Wait for me at home.” 4 But Little Blue wants to play with Little Yellow. 5 “Where is Little Yellow?” he asks. 6 Here he is. 7 They hug each other so hard that… 8 ...they both turn green.9 Little Blue and Little Yellow, now both green as could be, return home. A But Papa and Mama Blue say, “You are not our Little Blue, you are green.” B Papa and Mama Yellow say, You are not our Little Yellow, you are green.” C Little Blue and Little Yellow are very sad. They burst into tears, yellow and blue tears. D Suddenly they turn blue and yellow again. “Now they will recognize us,” they exclaim. E Papa and Mama Blue are overjoyed to see their Little Blue again. F They kiss him and hug him tight. G They also kiss and hug Little Yellow. As they do so, both turn green. 17 Now it dawns on them what has happened. 18 They rush to Papa and Mama Yellow to tell them the good news. 19 They all kiss and hug each other with joy. 20 All become green without envy. / END.

Baran Caginli: Proletariat against WAR 1 War hits workers the most! As a reaction, it is they who oppose the brutalities of war before anyone else. Workers oppose the brutal exploitation in factories, which during war turns into the production of hell. They also oppose the idea of battle, which is not theirs.

1 The peace in the world can be achieved only through the struggle of the proletariat, whether it is organized working class or the precarriat of slums to subhumans. The bourgeoisie and their history, as Walter Benjamin wrote, is nothing but the history of wars, exploitation and pillage. 2 To ignore the history of anti-war activism of the organized working class is to do a grave mistake regarding universal responsibility of proletariat in the history of international peace.

Sadly it is socialists as well who play deaf ears to this history. Demonstration of thousands of workers in August 1917 in Torino, general strikes in Berlin and Vienna of the mass of workers in January 1918, and before that, in 1915, every day strikes and demonstrations of workers all around Europe, like 450 thousand workers in Scotland in February-March 1915, were all against war.

Mazen Kerbaj: Let’s play with the Israeli army 1 THE POINTS Connect the points from 1 to 11 to discover the wonderful present that we regularly send to children in Gaza who have been good.

2 THE DIFFERENCES Can you find the 36452 differences between these two photos of the Beirut suburbs before and after our airforce has flown over?

3 WHO IS GOING WHERE? Cab you help each of the inhabitants of Tyr discover a new long-lasting home offered by our army?

4 THE LABYRINTH The little Palestinian boy has lost a few limbs after a meeting with our artillery. Can you help him find them?

Magdaleena Jakkila: Puolan itsenäisyyspäivä – hengitin ensimmäistä kertaa kyynelkaasua / The Independence Day of Poland – the first time I inhaled tear gas

Tekijän Nimi: Duunin nimi 1 Dit quat et ut occullaborum quibeatquas dolum am facearcipsam nim volupta tquassi dolore la doluptatio. Tur? Em quas ereprat quatio ea cone in ressi dolest, seque repro beaquo con estem. Ciis ipitasp erferfe rnatisq uiasim doloriam ut eturibus molorit asperro comnimusae. Ommod esectatquis voluptatur aut illaceritae re landipsum quaerum qui dolore, nullupta as comnihil int rehenim nia conemped quam quo quisciet dellorporia nihit officip sapiti simintibusda simil maiossi ncipiditium veratio nsectur, nusaescius et perspienihic test aut vel in expedios sedi nobis dolorep ratempori utemporum dolum fuga. Velibea corepro reperspit venis am qui blaciur ibusam aut am coreperis dolorum at.

Sarjainfo on kulttuurilehti, joka on kirjoittanut sarjakuvasta vuodesta 1972 alkaen.

Ilmiöt, haastattelut, kritiikit, pienlehdet, tapahtumat – kotimaassa ja ulkomailla!

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Saat myös jäsenkortin ja rahanarvoisia etuja yhteistyökumppaneiltamme sekä tuet suoraan suomalaista sarjakuvakulttuuria.

» www.sarjakuvaseura.fi

Sarjainfo

porthaninkatu 9 â—? oo53o helsinki

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5.–6.9.2020 kattilahalli | kalasataman vapaakaupunki supported by:

themes: graphic medicine â—? tattoo artâ—? spain

guests of honour : tiitu takalo (fi)| cyril pedrosa (fra) viivi rintanen (fi) | alex norris (uk)| sophie labelle (ca) and more tba! possible changes to organizing the festival due to the covid-19 epidemic will be announced during summer:

www.helsinkicomicsfestival.com