The city in smoke: representation and imagery
in the comicof the former Yugoslavia(1)

Italian version<

Our journey begins in Italy because this is where we work. In presenting the subject of this talk, before such expert speakers and a public with interests and educational backgrounds of different kinds, I feel obliged to make a small digression to explain the reason for this intromission.

Indeed the question that might arise spontaneously is: “Why speak of comic and imagery?” Unfortunately it is taken for granted that the comic smacks of illiteracy, of a lower form of art or art that is simply not art, of representation aimed at children unaccustomed to reading and adults who prefer it as entertainment during moments of leisure.
In part all this is true but there is more to consider.

A passage, not known very well even among those of the sector, from the introduction by Italo Calvino in his extremely well-known book The castle of Crossed Destinies, clarifies some elements of this thought for us. It is known that the structure of this book, consisting of two long stories, starts with the observation of two different packs of tarot cards, those of Marseilles and those illuminated by Bonifacio Bembo. Recalling the Renaissance and medieval repertoire of iconography had considerably wearied the writer, who wanted to continue the narration with a third text that would work on contemporary visual material. Calvino asked himself: What is the modern day equivalent of tarot cards as a representation of the collective unconscious? In so saying, what I am getting at is obvious. For the author the corresponding equivalent was comics. Unfortunately he never completed the project of The motel of Crossed Destinies, but he left it as a bequest to posterity.
Our interpretation will therefore follow his indications in part; we will not follow narrative strips but vignette, images and icons that lead us, under my authoritative guidance, to the exploration of an imagery otherwise difficult to see and to question.

So where did it all begin? And what comics are we talking about? The initiator of the narrative and representational strategy to which everyone turns when they have to find a root, is without doubt the American Will Eisner who died in January 2005. He invented a new kind of comic for which he himself coined the term graphic novel. Some question this definition but on the other hand as inventor he assumed the right to give a name to his creation. Right from the start he had invented a new kind of super hero, The Spirit, but in 1978 (he was already 61 years old) he published A Contract with God. A different kind of book in which the comic no longer tells funny, adventurous or science fiction stories, but narrates micro-stories collected from the author’s memory which have their epicentre in a block of buildings in the Bronx and that develop not only through the written word but also with the help of the typical instruments of comics, a universe comparable to that of a novel. Eisner himself maintains that his work, which is based on memory, is not unlike the work of an anthropologist up against the task of reconstructing an old skeleton. His most famous imitator is obviously Art Spiegelmann, who accredited this medium with the title of literature with his Maus and it is not by chance that he comes from the same intellectual and social background.
The comic had grown up.

A further step was taken by the generation of English scenario-writers and artists immediately after and many influenced the creation and definition of the imagery of the comic also in eastern Europe. With Alan Moore, scenario-writer who experimented with the most disparate narrative plots, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison the possibilities widened very quickly, following roads that narration in words had taken centuries to cover, in just a few years. These authors, mostly scenario-writers to tell the truth, have created a medium of absorption in which drawing, words, cinema, music and fashion merge with each other creating a fusion in which it is easy to find elements of recognition, identification and approximation to one’s own search for identity. In the series The Invisibles by Morrison, for example, there is an indiscriminate use of mixing elements from the most diverse metropolitan cultures and mainly subcultures. The entire construction is built on the hypothesis, close to science fiction¸ according to which the conspiracies, hinted at in political or pseudo-political discourses typical of groups that once would have defined themselves extra-parliamentarians, are true. Being true, a chosen group, called The Invisibles, that all come from marginal, underground experiences, become the paladins that defend or try to limit the damage of these evil conspirators by organisations that are also invisible. In one of the first albums comprising the series a homeless person (obviously the guide of an invisible – good) explains that cities are a virus…and nobody knows who brought it but, like all viral organisms, its only directive is to use all the resources available to produce copies of itself. Cities have their way of speaking to you… Thus the city constitutes a place in which evil dwells and finds its centre from which it irradiates: a great deal of literature, including comics, in the vein of a political fiction starts from this presupposition. This obviously happened in the rich capitalist west but what was being represented in countries of the east?First of all, the comic as a corrupt product of the west did not have a tradition. Cartoons were accepted for children and illustrations (with unusual wealth of production in Hungary and Czechoslovakia), but comics as such were not produced. An exception was Yugoslavia. Since this country was not aligned it was different from Warsaw pack countries. A famous case in this sense is that of Alan Ford who had a greater following there than in Italy. However other comics circulated too sometimes self-produced like the Yugoslav versions of Mickey Mouse in which there is even an unexpected appearance of a personage from Turkish tradition of children’s stories such as Nasreddin Hodja with his small donkey(2). Flash Gordon and Secret Agent X-9 were also published: very often comic artists were refugees from Russia in the nineteen thirties. In order to survive they were willing to do anything, even to work for publications considered low prestige at the time such as comics.

The publication of Mika Mis, the magazine that presented strips inspired or translated from the American comic, closed shop on 4 April 1941, two days before the German bombing of Belgrade. But during the thirties many original scenarios also appeared, often inspired by literature or folklore: from Les Miserables to Bas Celik, the choices were varied, many-sided and above all free of predetermined ideas also in the graphic art. This generation had a tragic destiny; none of them survived the immense catastrophe of the Second World War, neither as artists nor in some cases physically. But all this happened before Tito. Alan Ford’s success in Yugoslavia is still something of a mystery. It should be borne in mind that this comic has fans exclusively in Italy and the former Yugoslavia. A contributing factor was certainly the excellent translation by Nenad Brixy who, being in Zagreb, gave an unusual linguistic twist to the text, with the result that in the later reprint after dissolution of the State, the version in Serbian received numerous criticisms(3). It should also be noted that after the birth of the new republics, it was the only comic reprinted in all the countries, from Macedonia to Bosnia. Black humour, the tragic sarcasm and surreal vision of reality of Alan Ford in fact have had a great influence on the latest generation of authors.

We find this generation again in an editorial operation, the magazine Stripburger which in 1997 published Stripburek: the magazine, which from its appearance functioned as a catalyst for the experiences of authors from all the republics, brings together authors from almost all of Eastern Europe in this catalogue. The comic strip is no longer aimed at a public of children, on the contrary the wording Only for adult readers appears on the cover of the first issue. Being a Slovenian magazine, special space is given to the authors of the former Yugoslavia. There is a strong community identity which, dispersed by politics, seems to be saved by the imagery. The cover of the first collection, designed by Wostok, presents a character dressed in traditional clothes and long drooping moustache in a starry sky through which a strange airplane is flying. In the background there are explosions with bombs and a bear with glasses and a rocket launcher: the new imagery is visionary, it draws inspiration from tradition and transforms everything ruthlessly into a sarcastic model. The anthology has no pretensions to total coverage; it is without doubt partial and limited but gives a taste of how much movement there is and has been on the scene of the alternative comic and therefore indirectly on alternative production in countries such as Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. The intent is explicitly informative: in the editorial there is a statement that the collection is intended for readers in the west. You sent us the Japanese manga, the superior Americans, do you want to see what we can do over here? This is the question directed at the public and so all the stories are in English. It is not a collection aimed at its own public but at others; speaking of others always marks out a boundary and one’s own identity is claimed, in this case visual and of imagery. The stylistic options are many-sided, not unitary and not univocal: if Wostok works in the surreal and tragic-comic field, other authors like the Albanian Bengu work nearer to pictorial and conceptual solutions. The space becomes absolutely anonymous, with references to the concrete reality of the author but touching on universal and noble themes. However, it is an enemy and indistinct space in which, even if it might be an unconscious solution, the idea of a boundary which becomes a prison has a dominating presence. In Bengu’s story published in the first issue of Stripburek(4) the protagonist soon feels trapped: he is imprisoned by luminous LEDs similar to those of watches.
Many of these authors come from a background of painting; they have no tradition of comics in their country and this enables them to enjoy absolute freedom in their solutions, something which sometimes echoes the artistic avant-garde in the early nineteen hundreds. In an interview Bengu mentioned that in the Albanian language the word for comic does not even exist. This is a sign of the innovation that these individuals are introducing in their own country.

There is also the author’s reworking of the landscape: Zezelj, Croatian and from the Zagreb School of Art that boasts a highly cultured and illustrious tradition of artists, creates a representation of the landscape that is virtuous and highly expressionistic. The technique used, which prefers large fields of black and white, increases the sensation of alienation and spatial restructuring in his artwork. I happened to meet some architects in Italy that used his artwork for theses in architecture, something that did not surprise me. His imagery is obviously indebted to or in the same way a contaminator of that of Enki Bilal, whom we cannot cite among the authors presented as he has always lived in France. Zezelj works in the context of a cultured international horizon: he has also worked for DC comics and sustains a stateless view of culture, crossing the narrow-minded boundaries of his own belonging to national territory. Of a different stamp, also graphic, are the works of Zograf: he more than any other represents the underground world of the eighties of the last days of Belgrade before the dissolution. His disenchanted and oneiric view is a kind of comic version Virgilio that drives through the landscapes of a disintegrated world but at the same time is proud of his own roots. He struggles with the continuous temptation to give in to the dream and the obligation to remain in reality. The oneiric vision, or better the hypnagogic search of many years, is less known to his Italian readers, whereas he is well-known to a larger public for the daily reports sent to the Manifesto (in reality published without his knowing…) and later published in a single book. He now publishes his weekly strips in Vreme, creating an original precedent in his country: no longer the humoristic or satirical strip, but a brief journalistic article in the form of a comic strip.

These plates are published in Italy on-line by the Observatory on the Balkans, and on paper by the magazine Internazionale. Zograf’s formative background is closely linked with the world of underground and rock music: from here comes the journalistic verve of the author, who took his first steps as music critic. He then chose the alias Zograf (which actually means painter) to separate his double identity as comic strip author and journalist. But as often happens, his second identity has overtaken the first. His style has grown with the passing of time, but some unusual features have been kept: the most important of these is the view. His representation is always subjective, his eye always lingers on things and facts with a surprised attitude that comes from childhood innocence. It is indeed a highly subjective view that draws its capacity to reveal precisely from the fact of being innocent and aware of the limitations of the viewpoint.

Even when he commented live on the bombardments of his own city by NATO forces he did not change register. Another element in the makeup of his poetics is the research on dreams. This originates with personal studies by the author on hypnagogic techniques. This collateral research, but felt by the author as the originating centre from which his work comes, is inserted in a coherent way with the often magic allure and bordering on the anthropological horizon of the work of many authors from eastern Europe. The constant reference to the world of magic, to the folkloric layer which constitute the identifying humus to which they refer is common to many of these artists: the sarcastic and iconoclastic Wostok himself (unfortunately for the moment not translated into Italian) has as his main character a man with a long moustache, dressed in traditional clothes, who interacts in an ironic desecrating way with contemporary reality. It is the point of conflict between these two parallel but not contemporary worlds that creates the ironic difference and becomes an element of discovery. Zograf acts as a bridge on which to cross this dark opaque point: his last stories which appeared in Vreme are no longer directed at the other world, the west, to recount what is happening in his own country which has suddenly fallen into the abyss of civil, historical and economic regression, but they are stories that speak of the other Europe to his own country. He has given himself the job of ferryman. Just as he himself sustains, the opportunity offered to him to travel on the occasion of festivals, meetings, study trips, became the third root of his narration in images. His role as storyteller became the stylistic code of these short notes that clearly have the function of going beyond the boundaries for those who cannot do so, or alternatively of showing scenarios of his own shattered country from little known viewpoints.

The need to narrate originated from a sense of loss and emptiness, characterises also the work of Slovenian Tomas Lavric alias TBC. We will pause for a moment to consider in particular his book New Times. This text is especially interesting because the common background of the micro-stories narrated is a housing project quarter built during the years of Tito. The architectural frame is the series of events drawn and in a certain sense it is the unquestioned protagonist of the book. The beginning briefly describes the birth of the place: inauguration with great pomp and propagandist speeches, while a badly timed pigeon leaves droppings on the speaker and someone discovers that he has fallen into political disgrace. Just a few lines and few words to describe a work that no longer exists. The inauguration of the uncompleted complex closes and it moves on to modern times: the quarter has still not been completed, times have changed and the commemorative statue is shown from behinds. The narrative type evidently recalls Will Eisner: there was a neighbourhood of New York which served as a backdrop for the daily unrepeatable stories of disappearing inhabitants, of a humanity which has now changed surnames and origins and which Eisner wanted to save from being lost from memory. Lavrič uses the same method of the unifying and characterising location, with great evocative personality, to narrate stories of a contemporary reality that knowingly navigates through the loss of a world. It is a memory in balance: the passage has been too fast and the past re-emerges from the wells impertinently. The new has invaded individual existence irreparably and so they appear with variations sometimes a little moralistic, drug addition and prostitution like omens of the approaching new. Another interesting publication by this author is Stories of Bosnia(5): a kind of human bestiary, a series of stories that take their inspiration from an animal that functions as an iconic metaphor and assonance with the stories told. The book has won numerous international awards and acclaim and is certainly one of the most interesting works produced by authors of this part of the world because it manages to use a rather mainstream narrative and graphic style to tell stories that go beyond the narrative voices that we know.

Then there is a myriad of other authors, sometimes episodic in their publication, that live in fanzines, magazines, independent publications and who often come from worlds bordering on and intersecting with comics, like stickers, street collages, music, video-art, etc. Examples of these authors and the styles that come from them can be seen in Ivana Tabanovic, who uses a collage of images taken from cult films such as Godzilla or from news reports and that presents them to us with new meaning thanks to the use of non organic texts with the imagery. Or the very young Croatian Emil Jurcan who uses images and places not unlike those of his contemporaries of Seattle or Chicago and reinterprets them, using his personal viewpoint. These authors often operate in collectives, either real or virtual in the web, they have multiple contacts with other activists in imagery in other parts of the world and they feel more like citizens of these web communities than the city in which they live physically. It is a citizenship given by common aesthetics of reality and not by passports and languages. As a matter fact they often publish their works directly in English and this aspect sometimes creates disagreements. I happened to be present at a debate of this type at the last GRRR! Festival of Pancevo, where the authors present from all countries of the former Yugoslavia spoke in English since there were international guests. A Bosnian author pointed out this element as a limit of the meeting. There were a few moments of visible embarrassment, smoothed over by the spirit of mediation of Zograf who appealed to the traditional spirit of hospitality of the Balkan people! I would like to underline the considerable presence of women authors, in particular a young artist, who in spite of her young age has several years of work behind her, Maja Veselinovič. Besides drawing, she is an animator of comic fanzines, where the topic of diversity in genres is dealt with using ironic and playful tones which are however no less caustic. Her infantile graphics are obviously rooted in illustrations for children(6) and the traditional xylography that boasts a considerable tradition in these lands.

All the authors I am speaking about come from the same cultural humus: the world of the underground basement. Some of them have become quite famous but this is not why they have abandoned the narrative or graphic code that makes them recognisable and far from the great factories of serial production. They allow themselves the freedom to write highly subjective paradoxical stories that always shift the universalistic sense of the drawing into a limited visual field, but perhaps precisely for this reason they are truer. They also have in common the possession of a strong identity as authors, they do not feel like witnesses but artists. Their presence in their respective countries is generally perturbing; we are speaking about important minorities that represent the critical but not aligned eye of imagery.

They obviously observe reality from an inclined plane, populated by symbols, allusions and tarots – nevertheless at low cost.

Published in Le città divise: i Balcani e la cittadinanza tra nazionalismo e cosmopolitismo, a cura di G. M: Apuzzo, Infinito edizioni, Roma 2005.