MoCCA Fest has just announced its programming. With the festival of indie itself is set for April 11-12th at a new venue, the Center 520, programming will be held a short walk away at the High Line Hotel at 180 Tenth Avenue and 20th Street. Curated by Bill Kartalopoulos, the schedule includes several tie-ins to the current Alt-Weekly Comic shows up at the SOI, as well as three ticketed events, with Scott McCloud Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Raina Telgemeier. Tickets are free with MoCCA admission but you need to sign up at the SOI website now to reserve a space.
While the line-up of panelists is impressive, including the three above superstars and also Rebecca Mock, Annie Goetzinger, Kim Deitch, Julia Wertz and many more; Kartalopoulos has lined up an equally erudite slate of panel moderators, drawn from NYC’s greater cultural world: MoMA curator Laura Hoptman; avant-garde poet and Ubuweb founder Kenneth Goldsmith; curator and Saul Steinberg Foundation managing director Patterson Sims; Hyperallergic senior editor Jillian Steinhauer; New York Times art director Alexandra Zsigmond, and more.
All in all, state of the comics art and as usual the problem is finding time to buy all the new comics while still attending all the great programming.
Here’s the complete line-up:
SATURDAY PROGRAMMING
12:30 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
Scott McCloud Q+A *
Scott McCloud is widely acclaimed as North American comics’ most influential theorist. His 1993 analysis-in-comics-form Understanding Comics is a staple of university classrooms, and has found application in other forms including interactive and interface design. Reinventing Comics addressed the form and economy of digital comics and issues of diversity within the comics field, and Making Comics offered a guidebook to constructing effective narrative work. He was the Guest Editor for The Best American Comics 2014. His most recent work is The Sculptor, a fictional graphic novel. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.
12:30 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Work in Progress
This is the ultimate sneak preview: Four artists will discuss graphic novels they are currently working on, showing pages yet-to-be-published from books yet-to-be-announced, and revealing material that lays bare their working methods. This session will offer a rare glimpse of work fresh from the drawing table, and will bring us directly into the processes of artists Kim Deitch, Sarah Glidden, Dash Shaw, and Julia Wertz, all of whom are currently working on new and surprising books. Moderated by Richard Gehr, author of I Only Read It for the Cartoons.
2:00 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
Aline Kominsky-Crumb Q+A *
Aline Kominsky-Crumb is one of the most significant artists to emerge from the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Kominsky-Crumb fled an upbringing in Long Island, finishing a BFA at the University of Arizona and proceeding to San Francisco. She discovered underground comix and began drawing pioneering expressionistic, autobiographical work. After publishing with the Wimmen’s Comix collective, Kominksy-Crumb and Diane Noomin co-founded Twisted Sisters, which later became a pair of influential anthology books. She was the editor of Weirdo and has frequently collaborated with her husband, Robert Crumb. She will discuss her work in this special session with MoMA curator Laura Hoptman.
2:00 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Building an Image
In this unique and insightful panel, a group of striking image-makers will peel back the layers behind the process of creating memorable images. Sam Bosma, Kali Ciesemier, andRebecca Mock will discuss the artistic labor behind their work, revealing both the technique and the thought process behind their images. Nathan Fox, a striking image-maker himself and the chair of SVA’s MFA in Visual Narrative program, will lead the discussion and also share his own working process.
3:30 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
Raina Telgemeier Q+A *
Raina Telgemeier has distinguished herself as the leading American artist producing graphic novels for younger readers. Her autobiographical graphic novel Smile has spent more than two years on the New York Times Graphic Books bestseller list, and her follow-up, Drama, has won the Stonewall Book Award among other distinctions. Most recently she has published a sequel to Smile titled Sisters, and Scholastic will soon republish in full color her earlier series ofBaby-Sitters Club comics adaptations. Telgemeier will discuss her work with School Library Journal reviews editor Luann Toth.
3:30 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Plagiarism as Practice
The boundaries between inspiration and infringement are increasingly vague and increasingly contested in the post-internet era, even as we approach the centennial of Duchamp’s seminal masterpiece of appropriation, Fountain. Avant-garde poet and ubuweb founder Kenneth Goldsmith teaches Uncreative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He will discuss plagiarism as practice with comics artists Ilan Manouach, whose Katz re-presented Maus with all of the heads redrawn and sparked a legal action in France; Blaise Larmee, who has tested the limits of appropriation and impersonation online; and R. Sikoryak, whose Masterpiece Comics appropriate canonical literature and classic comics.
SUNDAY PROGRAMMING
12:30 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
Alt-Weekly Comics
Beginning with the Village Voice in the 1950s and peaking with a wave of publications in the 1980s and 1990s, alternative weekly newspapers spoke with an independent voice to local communities, and comics were a distinct part of those papers’ visual identities. Coinciding with the Alt-Weekly Comics exhibit currently on view at the Society of Illustrators, this panel will consider the phenomenon of alt-weekly comics with art director and editor Bob Newman (The Seattle Sun, The Rocket and The Village Voice) and cartoonists Ben Katchor, Michael Kupperman, and Mark Newgarden. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.
12:30 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Biography: The Lives of Artists
Memoir, non-fiction and biography have emerged as significant categories in comics. Comics about artists represent a special challenge: the cartoonist must represent the work of an artist through his or her own visual approach, revealing points of disjunction and harmony.Hyperallergic Senior Editor Jillian Steinhauer will discuss these issues with French comics legend Annie Goetzinger, whose Girl in Dior chronicles the first season of the storied fashion house; James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook, whose 7 Miles a Second was both a biography of and a collaboration with David Wojnarowicz; and Dutch cartoonist Barbara Stok, whose Vincent makes Van Gogh approachable through a style completely unlike his own.
2:00 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
We Hire Cartoonists
Cartoonists have often pursued split-careers as illustrators or other kinds of graphic artists in order to build stable careers. Increasingly, art directors and editors are hiring cartoonists to bring the entire capacity for visual narrative to editorial projects, especially online where new technologies offer another set of emerging techniques and formats. A panel of editors and art directors including Tablet’s Wayne Hoffman, Autostraddle’s Ali Osworth, and New York Times Art Director Alexandra Zsigmond have all frequently worked with cartoonists in a variety of ways, online and in print. They will talk about what they do, the innovations they’ve pursued, and what they look for in the work they commission.
2:00 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Saul Steinberg 101
Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) occupies a unique place in cultural history. A popular modernist, his work as a cartoonist, illustrator and fine artist appeared on magazine covers and gallery walls. His work frequently referred to the iconography and conventions of cartooning and continues to fascinate with its inventive expression of sophisticated concepts through abstracted imagery and pure line. Cartoonist Austin English, multidisciplinary artist Richard McGuire, New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly, and Morgan Library curator Joel Smith will discuss the lesson they’ve learned from Steinberg’s work with The Saul Steinberg Foundation’s Managing Director Patterson Sims.
3:30 pm / The Matthews Room of the High Line Hotel
R. Sikoryak and Neil Numberman Present: CAROUSEL for KIDS!
Acclaimed cartoonist R. Sikoryak brings a special KIDS’ edition of CAROUSEL, his long-running series of live comics readings and other projected pictures, to the MoCCA stage, co-hosted by Neil Numberman (Do NOT Build a Frankenstein!). Featuring Jon Chad (Leo Geo),Sam Henderson (Nickelodeon Magazine’s Scene But Not Heard), Kevin McCloskey (We Dig Worms!), Mark Newgarden & Megan Montague Cash (Bow Wow’s Nightmare Neighbor,Joey Fly: Private Eye), Nadja Spiegelman & Sergio García Sánchez (Lost in NYC), Raina Telgemeier (Sisters), and more! Stories, gags, audience participation, and more, for kids of all ages.
3:30 pm / The Rusack Room of the High Line Hotel
Comics and Disability
The rise of disability studies has prompted a non-hierarchical reconsideration of disability. In parallel, the emergence of “outsider art” has enlarged aesthetic possibilities within art, but not without introducing new category problems. This panel will trace emerging points of engagement between these issues and comics. Ilan Manouach will discuss Shapereader, his innovative 57-plate graphic novel for the blind. Anne-Françoise Rouche is the director of La “S” Grand Atelier in Vielsalm, Belgium, an arts center for persons with mental disabilities that organizes collaborations with contemporary artists. Frémok artist DoubleBob, who has participated in these projects, will join the discussion. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.
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