Voice
comic book
2012
The comic book Voice was created as a site-specific work within the 53rd October Salon (GOOD LIFE: Physical Narratives and Spatial Imaginations, 2012). The theme and location of that October Salon inspired the artist to take a look, in the introductory part of the book, into the Geozavod Building itself, which at that moment was a symbol of the forgotten and suppressed topos from the collective memory of the space from the beginning of the twentieth century. The plot of the comic book is directed towards two non-celebrated/forgotten writers.
As the main narrator, the artist briefly introduces us to the story of the Geozavod Building at the beginning, and then places the emphasis on two writers who worked outside the official elite social streams, which is why they remained anonymous, i.e., forgotten. One is Radomir Prodanović, who could have become an avant-garde poet and writer, and the other is R. Lenić, who wrote so-called entertaining literature in the 1930s. They are presented through excerpts from their oeuvre – Prodanović with his avant-garde epic poem Let Us Sing, and Lenić with an excerpt from her novel Gordana’s Love. Prodanović and Lenić wrote on different topics and in different styles. Zograf finds a connection between them in the fact that they both thought and wrote about basic human feelings and concepts such as love, hate, fear, hope. This is about the relationship between the vital force of creativity and the fact that it can be almost completely suppressed with the passage of time.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Purchase Contract: III-5-180/14.6.2016.
Inventory No. 1418
Photo: Cultural Centre of Belgrade
Selected Bibliography:
53rd October Salon, Good Life: Physical Narratives and Spatial Imaginations. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2012
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Aleksandar Zograf (Saša Rakezić) (1963, Pančevo, Serbia) started publishing his comics in Yugoslav periodicals in 1986 – in the magazines NON, Ritam, Rock, Mladost. In the early 1990s, he began publishing more actively abroad, especially in America, in the magazines The Comics Journal, Zero Zero, Weirdo, Rare Bit Fiends, Buzzard, Bonus, Tantalizing Stories, The Stranger, New City. Fantagraphics Books published several of his titles: Life Under Sanctions, Psychonaut #1 and Psychonaut #2. Since 2003, the Belgrade weekly Vreme has regularly published two pages of his colour comics. He has participated in several international comics festivals, conferences and exhibitions. More information at http://www.aleksandarzograf.com/