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page — 1 GRAPHIC, NOVEL. Sketching W. G. SEBALD IN Prishtina.

Graphic, Novel. Sketching W. G. Sebald in Pristina

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GRAPHIC, NOVEL. SKETCHING W. G. SEBALD IN PRISTINA shows the work of 8 young comic strip artists, who gathered during a one week workshop in Pristina. Taking the work of W. G. Sebald as a source of inspiration, the artists rethought the dynamics between image and text and - by this means - dealt with the city of Pristina, its history, architecture and their own subjective perception of it.

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GRAPHIC, NOVEL.—

Sketching W. G. SEBALD IN Prishtina.

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GRAPHIC, NOVEL.—

Sketching W. G. SEBALD IN Prishtina.

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contents, page.

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006 — Preface012 — Ute Friederich:

The combination of text and images: Comics, W. G. Sebald and the concept of memory

018 — Mathis Eckelmann: »A snail does not build its home, it grows out of its trunk« (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)

023 — Mathis Eckelmann Untitled

029 — Ester Vanhoutte Prishtina Streets

059 — Gerta Oparaku Goodbye

071 — Mina Fina Please Wait!

099 — Neven Misaljević Kling Klang

107 — Zgjim Elshani How does one deal with change anyway?

119 — Christina Gransow 2 days of supermoon

165 — Jelle Kindt Untitled

174 — Biographies178 — Colophon

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preface, page.page — 6

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This volume showcases works of eight artists who participated in the workshop »Graphic, Novel. Sketching W. G. Sebald in Prishtina« that took place in May 2012 in Prishtina, Kosovo. The workshop was held by the comic-strip artist Barbara Yelin and the researcher Ute Friederich.

The engagement with graphic novels as such and the involvement and networking of artists from both, the region and Western Europe, has brought about a project that is unique in its kind in Prishtina. It drew artists from various disciplines together and engaged them in grappling with the intricate relation between image and text and its potential in representing the blurred zones of memory.

The main reference and the source of inspiration was the work of the German author W. G. Sebald (1944 –2001) and his special approach. He ventured in storytelling using texts and images to illustrate historical incidents, in order to find a momentary equilibrium between otherwise hazy or fragmented recollections, personal memories and, at times, ineffable events. Based on photos and architectural details he unfolds his tales and interweaves them to a tight net. Following his example, the workshop participants equally went on a quest exploring the city and capturing various realities, eager to tackle what suggests itself as ›grey areas‹. Tracing unknown paths and establishing individual points of reference, they created a personal and distinct account of their experiences.

Through the organisation of his panels Mathis Eckelmann limits the view of the reader and only allows a particular perspective. Small, equal-sized panels show finely drawn architectural details of Prishtina. Whoever knows the city can assemble the extracts into a city tour: from the Palace of Youth and Sports via Newborn to the University library. The rhythm created by the repetition of the panels is interrupted by quotes from

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Sebald’s work, in a way similar to that which is found in Sebald, whereby the framed photos repeatedly interrupt the characteristic style of his prose. The workshop also inspired Mathis Eckelmann to contribute a short essay that bonds with his practical work.

Like W. G. Sebald, Ester Vanhoutte allows herself to be guided by coincidences. One of the coincidences which occupied her during her stay in Prishtina is the town twinning between the city districts of Schaarbeek in Brussels (where she lives) and Dardania in Prishtina (where the workshop took place). She pursues this coincidentally discovered connection in her work and relates her own perception of the city of Prishtina with her personal experiences from Brussels. This associative and searching approach is also visually apparent: no panels bound the illustrations, which repeatedly touch upon the theme of her own foreignness – a condition from which Sebald’s figures also suffer.

In contrast, Gerta Oparaku’s work »Goodbye« is presented in conventional comic format. In strictly framed, black and white separated panels she tells of the journey of two young women from Tirana to Prishtina. The figures pass through time and space and allow the reader to take a brief glimpse into their world of thought for the duration of the journey. To use Sebald’s words, one could say: »For how hard it is / to understand the landscape / as you pass in a train / from here to there / and mutely it / watches you vanish.« (W. G. Sebald: Across the Land and the Water. Selected Poems, 1964-2001, trans. by Iain Galbraith, London 2011, p. 3)

Mina Fina brings herself closer to Prishtina through poetic means. In her fanzine »Please wait!« her own feelings intertwine themselves with her journey and her stay in the city. It is as if by reading one follows her thoughts and impressions. The illustrated pictures are alternated with passages of text, which describe not only the city, but also her feelings, and evoke different moods.

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The pictures narrate these moods further. Through the use of transparent paper and delicate filigree handwriting, the text itself becomes a picture.

With high-rise ravines and decay, Neven Misaljević paints an apocalyptic picture of Prishtina. The drawings, contained within equal-sized panels, thematise the city as a structure built by people, one which constricts and imprisons. In »Kling Klang« Misaljević mixes fiction with real episodes from his stay and combines both elements into a new story which repeatedly slides into the surreal. He implements the concept of bricolage (with which Sebald also works strongly) very literally. During his walks around the city he collected unremarkable objects which are then rediscovered in his comic panels.

In his comic »How does one deal with change anyway?« Zgjim Elshani makes reference to a contemporary occurrence in Prishtina. The central point of his work is the three-sided obelisk on the »Brotherhood and Unity« square, built in 1961 under the rule of Jozep Broz Tito. The city administration has decided to tear down the monument and change the site into the »Adem Jashari Square«, which will in addition be decorated with a statue of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) hero. With his comic, Elshani raises awareness of a particular handling of the history of Prishtina by the state authorities and anticipates what is to happen in future. At the same time he contributes towards ensuring that the history of the obelisk will not be forgotten.

In her fanzine »2 days of supermoon« Christina Gransow investigates her surroundings and directs her gaze towards the inconspicuous and incidental things which are quintessential for Prishtina’s cityscape. With her illustrations she deals with a citation from W. G. Sebald in which a particular understanding of history is clearly apparent. She places a quote from Bill Clinton next to the

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picture of a strawberry with cream, thus positioning herself not only towards the state’s handling of its socialist inheritance but also towards the assessment of the situation by other nations.

The works of Jelle Kindt captivate through their multi-layered structure. Some of them reveal a depth, which makes certain items visible when looking at them for a longer time. The common ground the images share is that they capture details of Prishtina and transmit a certain, somehow faded truth.

The theoretical background that workshop leader Ute Friederich tried to give the participants from a more academic point of view, hoping to indicate some points from where to start their exploration of the city of Prishtina, is also outlined in this volume. The text explores the structural parallels between Sebald’s writing, comics and the act of remembering and can thus also be read as inspiration for the examination of the participants’ work.

The project »Graphic, Novel. Sketching W. G. Sebald in Prishtina« was a project of Qendra Multimedia (RKS) in collaboration with Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art (AL) and was organized by Elisabeth Desta and Sonja Lau. It was made possible by the kind support of the Goethe Institute Belgrade. Thanks for the formation of the publication goes to Jeton Neziraj, Ute Friederich, Mina Fina, James Leigh, Julia Danila, Jelle Kindt and Barbara Yelin.

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Ute Friederich

The combination of text and images: Comics, W. G. Sebald and the concept

of memory

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What is a comic? There are many different answers to this question and therefore many different definitions of the »ninth art«, as the comic is often called, exist. Most of them emphasise the special language of comics which is characterised by verbal, graphic and visual signs. In his metacomic Scott McCloud defines comics as »juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer« (McCloud 1993, p. 9). Just as Will Eisner, he characterises comics as »sequential art« (Eisner 2008). But what is almost as important as sequentiality is the interplay of images and text. Almost all comics combine visual and verbal elements and thereby try to overcome the traditional aesthetic opposition between images and texts, synthesising their opposed signs and unfolding their particular narrative power. Image and text support each other in a productive interdependency, where the images are always more than a mere illustration of what the words say and vice versa.

This interplay of text and images is also characteristic of W. G. Sebald’s (1944-2001) writing. The author and literary scholar, who was born in Germany, but lived and worked in Great Britain, frequently inserts photographs or other pictures and documents into his prose. Similar to the medium of comics, the images he uses go far beyond the purpose of illustrating the text. The relationship between text and images in Sebald’s work is rather a dialogic one; it is an interplay with both elements constantly referring to each other (cf. Steinaecker 2007, p. 10). Both, comics and Sebald’s work, seem to suture visual and verbal elements with each other, but this operation is by no means perfectly seamless. The opposing signs can’t be synthesised completely, which has the effect that different possible meanings arise and exist side by side. »Suture might be described as that which ‘fills in’ the gaps between images […] by constructing a subjective sense of continuity […].« (Mitchell 1995, p. 92) Those gaps of course are a typical feature of comics, where the individual panels are separated by a blank space: the gutter. in order to ›read‹ the sequence of panels and understand the narrative progress the reader has to establish connections between two succeeding images and imagine what is not explicitly shown. He thus ›fills in the gaps‹, not only receiving the meaning but actively constructing it. McCloud calls this act »closure«: »Comic panels fracture both time and space, offering a

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jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments. But closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.« (McCloud 1993, p. 67) Sebald’s combination of text and images creates gaps as well, mainly because the inserted pictures do not have captions and are often placed in mid-sentence. Similar to the perception of comics it is the reader, »who has to construct a sense of continuity between pictorial and verbal representations that is absent on the performative level« (Horstkotte 2005, p. 273). In comics as well as in Sebald’s work suture therefore is not only achieved by the artist/author who combines images and text; it needs the reader to complete the task of bringing these two different elements together.

As this combination of different elements offers various possible connections and every reader involves his or her personal knowledge and ideas, there are many opportunities to fill the gaps and many ways of constructing meaning. Text and images can’t be synthesised completely and universally, which results in a kind of productive tension that is typical of comics and Sebald’s work. This is rooted in the opposing nature of verbal and visual signs. Text is always perceived as a sequence: the whole text consisting of a succession of sentences, a sentence consisting of a row of words and a word consisting of different phonemes in a certain order. Images on the contrary can be perceived as a whole. Of course it is possible to wander from detail to detail while looking at a larger picture, but it is always possible to perceive it as a whole, seeing all elements simultaneously. This essential difference enables the connection of verbal and visual signs to unfold its special narrative potential. Even so comics are read as a succession of panels (i.e. single images), the whole page is at the same time perceived as one image. The medium’s special combination of sequentiality and simultaneity can »force the readers to break with standard linear panel-processing habits« (Bartual 2012, p. 48). The same effect is achieved by Sebald’s insertion of photographs and other images in the middle of a sentence. In order to look at the picture the reader has to stop in mid-sentence and the special rhythm of Sebald’s prose is disrupted.

Because of these structural characteristics it can be argued, »that comics seem to have certain advantages when it comes to representing memory […] because, as a medium, it can rise above the linear limitations of a purely sequential narration system« (Bartual 2012, p. 65). Thus comics – and Sebald’s form of combining text and images as

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well – counterfeit the structures of trauma and remembrance because they are able to represent time (and therefore memory) not only as historical sequence but also panoptically, »as several moments of time in the same space« (Bartual 2012, p. 56). Comic artist Chris Ware for example generates this effect by using a whole page to show a large image of the house where his protagonist lives. This large image is divided by a grid pattern into panels which all show different moments in time. It is possible to read this page as a succession of panels as well, thus perceiving a sequence of events. This concurrence of sequentiality on the one hand and a large image that can be perceived as a whole on the other hand makes it possible to represent time spatially. A similar effect is achieved by W. G. Sebald by introducing different levels on which memories are related. In his novel »Austerlitz« for example a narrator gives the recollections of the protagonist, who told him the story of his early childhood, which he in turn had to reconstruct from the memories of his nanny, because he can’t remember anything himself. The narrator’s sometimes very long accounts of this past are frequently interrupted by insertions like »according to Adela, said Austerlitz« (Sebald 2002, p. 119). The sequentiality of Sebald’s very rhythmic prose is interrupted and the interlaced structure of the memories comes to the fore: the fact that in the act of remembering we often blend different moments of time into a single space, merging »past and present in an organic whole« (Bergson 1910, p. 100). Memory and the special relationship between the perception of time and the act of remembering are prevalent topics in Sebald’s writing and his notion of how this process works is closely connected to the ideas of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. For him

[m]emory […] is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. […] In reality, the past conserves itself automatically. In its entirety, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it […]. (Bergson 1922, p. 5)

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To put it in the words of Austerlitz, the protagonist of Sebald’s novel:

It does not seem to me […] that we understand the laws governing the return of the past, but I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry […]. (Sebald 2002, p. 261)

This hints at Sebald’s understanding of historiography which is also not based on the assumption that history can be presented as a sequence of events, but is rather affected by the idea of simultaneity and panoptic perception. History – for Sebald – seems to be governed by chaotic patterns, by very different phenomena, partial random things, which eventually coincide and diverge again. In his opinion one important task of literature (as well as of historiography) is to elaborate this complex and chaotic patterns. In his own works he explores the combination of text and images in order to convey not only memories but also the underlying structures of memories and remembering. Similar to the medium of comics his texts »add a new dimension: they can give us a broader picture of memory, making explicit its very structure« (Bartual 2012, p. 65).

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BibliographyBartual, Roberto: Towards a Panoptical

Representation of Time and Memory. Chris Ware, Marcel Proust and Henri Bergson’s »Pure Duration«, in: Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art 1.1 (2012), pp. 47–68.

Bergson, Henri: Creative Evolution, transl. by Arthur Mitchell, London 1922.

Bergson, Henri: Time and Free Will. An Essay on the Immediate Data of Conciousness, transl. by F.L. Pogson, London 1910.

Eisner, Will: Comics and Sequential Art, New York/London 2008.

Horstkotte, Silke: Fantastic Gaps. Photographs Inserted into Narrative in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, in: Science, Technology and the German Cultural Imagination, ed. by Christian Emden and David Midgley, Oxford 2005, pp. 269-286.

McCloud, Scott: Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art, New York 1993.

Mitchell, W.J.T.: Picture Theory. Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, Chicago 1995.

Sebald, W. G.: Austerlitz, transl. by Anthea Bell, London 2002.

Steinaecker, Thomas von: Literarische Foto-Texte. Zur Funktion der Fotografien in den Texten Rolf Dieter Brinkmanns, Alexander Kluges und W. G. Sebalds, Bielefeld 2007.

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Mathis Eckelmann

»A snail does not build its home, it grows out of

its trunk« (Georg Christoph

Lichtenberg)

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Wandering through an unknown town always means to walk paths inside one’s own mind, to draw lines on the city map as well as between memories, clichés and ideas, fears and needs – as Karl Marx allegedly put it ones: »Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive.« (Marx cited in Debord, n.p.)

Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of different impressions, the way through unfamiliar terrain is often accompanied by a way of helplessness at first. Anyway: Endeavoring to apprehend the city as a whole by walking its roads, is foredoomed to fail. ›Prishtinë‹ is an abstraction, but still, what one sees, hears and smells is tangible – in a way, at least.

Converging the surroundings is maybe described best as a process of gleaning – accumulating narrow, unconnected impressions, spotlights on frontages, forms and patterns, faces, scraps of conversation – fragments. Many of those fleeting impressions disappear again, or to put it more exactly, they submerge. Nearly as fast as they are captured.

But they accumulate and sometimes emerge in a different place, at a moment, when one scene is left behind, they as suddenly as surprisingly become meaningful through the other one. Using a picture of W. G. Sebald, one can imagine a ›fog‹, through which the shades of impressions start to sheen.

The mental images are leading a nomadic existence, the directions they take are unexpected – yet, they are not fortuitous in a common sense. The way one walks through a city is always influenced by presuppositions (as well as by the architecture and the way people are moving in it). The paths pursued while making ones way, run along »constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.« (Debord, n.p.) And this is true for the town that is emerging in the mind as much, as for the one made of dirt, cement and steel. The name itself, ›Prishtinë‹, summons up something, which cannot be separated from the way one experiences the things to be seen. We find this ambivalent process, between the willingness to embark unknown paths and the prepossessions everyone has (and which are necessary) in W. G. Sebald's writings as well. He describes a procedure of one of his characters, Austerlitz, who puts in order and reorganizes his collection of photographs, making new connections and associations that arise unexpectedly, turning the

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photographs over one by one »always with a new sense of surprise at what he saw, pushing the pictures back and forth […], arranging them in an order depending on their family resemblances […].« (Sebald 2002, p. 168)

But as the things which come along while walking around in a town, appear as something living, in motion, they are frozen in the pictures – they become fragments of a possible way of experience, emanations of a past, refracted through the creator, the material and the perception of the recipient. We have to realise that when we look at a picture, we look at something which speaks not only geographically from a different place than we are in, but also from another time. The moment it was created is over – and will never come back. It’s this unbridgeable gap between the moment of reception and the one of incurrence, which becomes obvious in particular, looking at old photographs. There’s a certain way of melancholy about it, because we become aware, as W. G. Sebald puts it,

that we always walk on an extremely thin layer of ice, that we can break through at any moment, that the whole thing is of a fragility that makes it almost impossible to make it from one day to the next, and that, confronted with this evidence, you actually have the feeling that the only thing you can do is to sit still and not move, so that everything passes as slowly as possible! (Sebald cited in Patt 2007, p. 107)

A photo shows a surface, separated from the past in an enigmatic way. In our minds, the story and the history of a person or a place is something, set by meaningful connections between the fragments of memory – a pattern or ornament.

On a photograph, it seems as all of this »is buried as if under a layer of snow« (Kracauer 1995, p. 54). Digging through it means hypothesizing, developing stories and fictions – W. G. Sebald names it a »big yard of nothingness« (Sebald cited in Scholz 1999, transl. M.E.) which is to be filled with meaning. This needs an active subject who is willing to take the unknown paths, to follow the traces found between the things to see and the ideas and imaginations of the viewer.

Taking a photograph as the starting point for a drawing, may help to make this obvious. Doing so, the process of drawing itself means

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to follow the traces. One becomes engrossed in the picture or just in a part of it, starts to palpate the surfaces, tracks them and realizes that »indeed, rather strange things may happen, when we walk around in the world unplanned« (Sebald cited in Scholz 1999, transl. M.E.).

The moment of melancholy is sublated in this process – the unredeemed promise of the photograph, to see something how it ›really occurred‹, vanishes through the abstraction of a drawing.

The aim of my work was not so much the production of a given meaning but the attempt to find an expression for my rather subjective approach towards the town, considering Sebald’s thoughts. The outcome consists of different panels which stand beside each other fragmented and unconnected on first sight. It needs the quotations, a specific idea to open them up, to become meaningful. Thereby, what is pictured changes itself – in the same way as the city does, when the ideas about it change. The eye of the viewer can move around, jump between the panels. It’s up to him or her to draw the connections between them (or not) – and each one can change its meaning in consideration of others. This is how the perception of the city is connected with the way we are moving through it.

There isn’t something like one straight, compelling story to find – neither in the succession of the different panels, nor in the city. The stories behind what is to be seen stay hidden, there are just traces: of small ones, like the pictures of deceased persons which can be found everywhere in Prishtinë, like ghosts on the lampposts and traffic lights; and of bigger ones, of a war, through which the Germans finally got rid of their past by turning it to their own favor.

Pictures show the surface of things, just insinuations – maybe they never show the truth, but they can certainly lie.

BibliographyDebord, Guy-Ernest: Theory of the Dérive, http://library.nothingness.org/

articles/SI/en/display/314 Sebald, W. G.: Austerlitz, transl. by Anthea Bell, London 2002.Patt, Lise: Searching for W. G. Sebald. Photography After W. G. Sebald, Los

Angeles 2007.Kracauer, Siegfried: The Mass Ornament. Weimer Essays, Cambridge 1995.Scholz, Christian: Der Schriftsteller und die Fotografie, script of the radio-

feature, WDR Köln 1999.

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Mathis Eckelmann—

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Ester Vanhoutte—

Prishtina Streets page — 57

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Gerta Oparaku—

Goodbye page — 68

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MINA FINA—

PLEASE WAIT! page — 96

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Neven MisaljeviC—

Kling Klang page — 104

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Zgjim Elshani—

HOW DOES ONE DEAL WITH CHANGE ANYWAY?

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Christina Gransow—

2 days of supermoon page — 162

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Two days of supermoon

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1. day

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2. day

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Jelle Kindt —

UNTITLED page — 173

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BIOGRaPHIES, PAGE.

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WORKSHOPARTISTS

MATHIS ECKELMANN (*1982) studied Sociology and Peace and Conflict studies in Marburg (Lahn). In 2010, he finished his studies with the Magister Artium in Marburg. In the course of his Masters Thesis »Photography as an academic source: Images of forced workers and Germans during National Socialism« he dealt with issues of remembrance and pictorial representation in photography. Currently he is living in Berlin, engaging himself in questions on politics, social theory, arts and comics.

ZGJIM ELSHANI (*1990) studies Graphic Design at the University of Prishtina in Kosovo. He currently works as graphic designer at the design company »Trembelat«. One of his recent projects includes the illustration of some of Prishtina’s most iconic buildings for the very first edition of the magazine »Lirindja«.

MINA FINA (Mina Žabnikar, *1978) graduated in Visual Communications at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2002. She is a freelance graphic designer who gives priority to issues of book and magazine design. Under the monicker of Mina Fina she explores drawing, animation and video, especially live VJ-ing. Since 2008, she is a member of »Grupa Ee« design collective. She lives and works between Ljubljana and Berlin.

CHRISTINA GRANSOW (*1980) studied Illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She lives and works in Hamburg as a freelance illustrator and artist. Her narrative work appeared in anthologies like »Orang«, »Strapazin« or »PlusPlus.« Her drawings and animation videos were shown in exhibitions and festivals such as at the Trancepop Gallery, Kyoto; enblanco Projektraum, Berlin and the Laterna Magica Filmfestival, Marseille.

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JELLE KINDT (*1981) studied Illustration and Comic Design at Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design, Brussels. He lives and works in Antwerp as illustrator and comic book artist. Jelle debuted with the short story »Het manneke aan den draad« (2011) published by »Strip Turnhout« in the comic magazine »Stripgids«, Belguim. In 2012 he won a prize for emerging illustrators »Goed voor druk« (VIF and De leeswelp). Meanwhile, Jelle made cartoons for the Flemish newspaper »De Standaard« (2011), made illustrations for the music magazine »Gonzo-Circus« (2011) and illustrated poems for »QP5« published by »Querido« (2012) in Holland.

NEVEN MISALJEVIC (*1979) studied Political Sciences and Journalism in Sarajevo. He is the co-founder of »Zvukovina Noise Records« (since 2007) and editor of »Stripnjak graphic Fanzine/Books« (since 2012), a non-profit label dedicated to audio and visual perversions, a merciless and brutal, yet honest presentation of empty truths easily swallowed due to the sheer ignorance of modern life. He currently works on various politically and culturally critical graphic essays and short comics.

GERTA OPARAKU (*1980) studied Art Direction and Costume Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tirana. She lives and works in Tirana as a costume designer such as for the film »Tirana Blue« (working title), for which she was also involved as PA and translator during the post-production phase. She spends her free time working on personal projects as comic book writer and illustrator, and has been invited to a number of festivals in Kosovo and Macedonia to present her work.

ESTER VANHOUTTE (*1985) studied Animation, Comics and Illustration at the Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design, Brussels. She currently travels the world and makes short comics about the cities she gets to live in.

WORKSHOPARTISTS

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WORKSHOPLEADERs

UTE FRIEDERICH (*1984) studied German and English philology in Bonn and Aberdeen. In 2009, she accomplished her studies with the Magister Artium in Bonn. Her Masters thesis »Komik – Comic. Comical elements in the work of Franz Kafka and their visual translations in graphic novels« was awarded the Roland-Faelske-Prize for comic and animation films. She is currently working on her dissertation on trauma, remembrance and montage in the oeuvre of W. G. Sebald and in a selection of graphic novels.

BARBARA YELIN (*1977) studied Illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She lives and works in Berlin as illustrator and comic book artist. Recent graphic novels include »Le Visi-teur« (2004), »Le Retard« (2006), both published by Actes Sud/Editions de L’An 2, and »Gift« (2010, with Peer Meter) published by Reprodukt. Since 2005 she is co-editor and contributor of SPRING, the annual magazine of women illustrators and comic artists. From 2010 to 2011, she was commissioned to run a series of comic workshops in Cairo on behalf of the Goethe-Institute Cairo. For the winter semester 2011/2012, she taught as visiting professor the seminar »Comics and Graphic Novels« at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar in Saarbrücken (Germany).

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Graphic, Novel. Sketching W. G. Sebald in Prishtina.

EditorElisabeth Desta, [email protected]

Editorial cooperationUte Friederich

PublisherQendra Multimedia, Prishtina, Kosovo www.qendra.org

Design and LayoutMina Fina, www.ee-grupa.com

© of the book: Qendra Multimedia 2012© of the text and images: authors and artists

Published with the kind support of the Goethe Institute Belgrade.

The project »Graphic, Novel. Sketching W. G. Sebald in Prishtina« was a project of Qendra Multimedia (RKS) in collaboration with Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art (AL) and was organized by Elisabeth Desta and Sonja Lau.

Katalogimi në botim – (CIP)Biblioteka Kombëtare dhe Universitare e Kosovës

82-32:7676:82-3282-98

Graphic, Novel : sketching W.G. Sebald in Pristina / Redaktor Elisabeth Desta. - Prishtinë : Qendra Multimedia, 2012. - 178 f. : ilustr ; 21 cm.

Parathënie : f. 6-10

1.Desta, Elisabeth

ISBN 978-9951-8829-5-8

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may

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Mathis Eckelmann

Ester Vanhoutte

Gerta Oparaku

Mina Fina

Neven Misaljević

Zgjim Elshani

Christina Gransow

Jelle Kindt